text:
expand polygons in scene so all faces are isolated?
I would like to know if it is possible to expand all faces on an object in the viewport to make it easy to identify and select specific vertices on a face. The best description I can come up with is to 'expand' all faces on an object so I can select a face easily, or a vertex in a viewport context.
My model is imported geometry so I don't know what is welded or not, I am hoping each triangle is imported as its own face and vertex set.
I do not want to edit the model to expand it via a modifier, I want to know if Blender supports a render mode that does this expansion thing so it's possible to view all faces in isolation, like I have shown in the attached graphic, and what that command is.  The graphic shows a standard view and an 'expanded view' of the same model in a different 3D editor.
Please see the attached image, captured from other 3d app.
Is there a way to do this in blender??  This is a temporary thing for selecting, like a display mode shift etc. not an edit to the model.
Thx

are you trying to split the faces? Mesh > Split > Faces by Edges. Then you can scale down each face if you enable the Transforme Pivot Point > Individual Origins. But the faces are now splitted  ;)   you can still join them back if you scale them up a bit and M > Merge by Distance

hmm.. no.  What I am looking for is a temporary change to the scene in the viewport, not actually to edit the model.  I would think this could be a display model function if it exists.

do you want to select a vertex/edge/link and then press L to have all linked? honestly....we are guessing here because your description isn't really good and i assume your question will soon be closed if you don't improve your question so that it is clear, what you mean....

Seriously?  Even though I say exactly what I want to do, and illustrate the question, you think it's vague?  Wow.  You did read the question and my follow-up comment right? Presumably this is not a Blender function, so I will need to find some other way to get at it.  I could isolate the face in order to select a vert, but that really seems like more work than it should/could be.

Are you trying to do pre-selection highlighting, or perhaps trying to select faces from centers? "Expand" is not really a clarifying description of those blue lines. Do you want edges drawn thicker so they can be selected more easily?

What you are calling blue lines is the background showing because the model faces have all been ?shrunk or ?expanded, ties directly to my question.  I guess since the question has been closed I was too obtuse about saying I wanted to select a vertex on the imported model on a particular face.  Thinking about moderating my response to Chris I figured out an alternative path, it's just (slightly) more work than that other 3D app.

Please edit your question (if you want an answer), absolutely unclear what you are asking here.

According to a dictionary, to expand is to become or make larger. On the second image, the triangles become smaller, not larger: https://imgur.com/ndUA6Ps . So this is one reason why we're confused, another is that you want it for selection to be easier, and yet decreasing triangles like that in my opinion makes selection harder. If there are "doubles", i.e. more than one vertex in the same place, a mode like that indeed would help selecting a particular vertex, and mentioning it in the question would clear up what you're trying to achieve.

Let's say there are 2 faces, which share 2 vertices: https://i.imgur.com/IdmnxkV.png - do you want them to be "expanded", so there's a space between them, and selecting a shared vertex, e.g. 1 would be displayed as selecting both bottom-left vertex of the right face, and bottom-right vertex of the left face? Or would you rather have such connected faces to not be moved apart, therefore clearly displaying which faces are connected into so-called "islands"? Or do you just want to work under an assumption, that all faces are separate and ask for a tool that works under such assumption?

"do you want them to be "expanded", so there's a space between them, and selecting a shared vertex, e.g. 1 would be displayed as selecting both bottom-left vertex of the right face, and bottom-right vertex of the left face?"  - Yes, nailed it.  I don't know that I care if verts are shared, just they are no longer occupying the same screen space so I can choose which one to grab.


text:
Geometry nodes instance on points: objects populate OFF my object
Scene has 2 meshes: a plane and a cylinder.  I have modified the plane to look like a simple terrain, so it has some surface variation.
The cylinder was translated from the origin and scaled, then I applied all transforms to it.
Then I created geometry nodes for the terrain and used instance on points to place the cylinder onto the terrain mesh.
Many of my instances are beyond the terrain mesh as you can see from the attachment.

I would like to know if this is normal because my instance geo is not at the origin, or if there is some way to correct this so the instance geometry stays on the terrain..?
OP edit: the objective is to populate the cylinder over the plane surface, and it appears the reason for the mismatch is because the cylinder geo is transformed (with all transforms applied), but the object origin was not set to the object, causing an offset for the instances.  Thanks to Chris for pointing that out.
I would be happy to upload the .blend file but I don't see a way to do that.  (thanks to John E. for the blend-exchange tip).
Thanks!

You can share your Blend file via https://blend-exchange.com/ following the instructions on that page to add the file link to your question.

just set the instance geo origin to geometry - solved. Why did you move the origin? maybe some details would help to understand what you want to do...?

Do you still want this re-opened? An object's origin is its location. (There's no rule saying that an object's mesh should be centred on its location.. that would be painful  ..  :) ) , so this behaviour is absolutely expected. Given that..  can you clarify what question remains?

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Maintain equal rotation on multiple objects
I am making a model with gears. I want to be able to turn any gear and have the others follow. Using constraints or drives only one gear will rotate (and the other will follow). Is there anything I can do?
edit: To clarify what I mean: I don't want to use physics, I want to be able to select any one of multiple gears, rotate it and have the rest rotate too. Using constraints or drivers I am restricted to only being able to turn the one gear that all the rest are constrained to.

Perhaps make it a rigid body object? Then you can make it a passive body so that it will affect other gears but not fall? Keyframe gravity? Hope these ideas helped!

Can you post some screenshots of the constraint or driver set up

Is it always the same gear you want to turn and have the others follow? Or does it have to work for turning any gear and the remaining follow?

@Yunnosch .. now I'm interested too... how would you do your second option without creating a dependency loop?

@RobinBetts I think no matter how this is done, the one gear being rotated to drive the rest would need its constraint or driver or physics setting or ... disabled or removed.  My take would be to set up an overseeing GearSystem class and use some custom property to mark objects as  gears.  While in "drive mode"  a driver on some property akin to  GearSystem.rotate(self)   will drive and set all the others based on context object being the driver gear.

Yes, it's possible.  You need to rig it twice, once in each direction.

No bone here is parented, but I've raised each bone in the Z axis to indicate a hierarchy of "copy rotation" constraints.  There are five bones.  First we travel through the gears one way, copying rotation along the way.  Then we travel back along the gears in the opposite direction, again, copying rotation along the way.  (The middle bone doesn't need to be duplicated.)  The gears themselves are parented only to the final bones.  The first three bones here should be understood as the control bones; the last two bones should be hidden.
Imagine rotating the second bone, indicating the middle wheel.  Nothing is directly parented to this, so there is no immediate effect from this.  The first bone is unaffected, but the third bone rotates properly via its constraint, rotating the right gear.
This rotation is then propagated to the fourth bone, which is what is responsible for actually rotating the middle gear, and then to the fifth bone, which rotates the left gear, even though there was no transformation given to the first bone.

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


text:
how to origin to geometry in one axis?
I have many objects with misaligned origin and different Z scale. My origin of each object  is located on Z = 0m coordinate.
Is there way how to move origin to the center of the object while keeping Z location on 0m?
There is no vertex or polygon in the middle.
Adding new picture for better explanatory, hope it help

thanks

Do they have a different Z scale as you wrote or a different Z location? And do you want the origin in the center (X, Y and Z) of the geometry or just move the geometry on the Z?

i don't understand the question. even the picture doesn't clearly illustrate the problem. voting to close as this is not clear.

Last question: origin XY-centered to the complete object or the bottom faces?

I don't know python so am not sure if you could write code to go through all your objects and do the following, but:
This is your original position

Go into Edit mode then Shift-S > Cursor to Selected to move the cursor to the centre of the object

Back in Object mode, bring up the N panel and on the View tab, set the 3D Cursor Z Location to 0 (zero).

Then Object > Set Origin > Origin to 3D Cursor should give the result you want:

problem is  that mine object is not centroid

That's why we needed more details in the question!

I have add new image to the question.

What do you mean by 'my object is not centroid'? If you mean that it's not a cube, my solution should work on any object because it snaps the cursor to the centre of the geometry of the object.

center of my object is not on the center of the axis, that's why i don't know where to send cursor

I don't think we can help you in that case.

@barberik What do you mean by saying "center of my object is not on the center of the axis"? You select all of the object's mesh in Edit Mode, then Shift+S > Cursor to Selected, then go to the cursor properties and manually type in 0 for the Z location, then afterwards in Object Mode set the origin to the cursor. Don't know what you need the "center of the axis" for.

yesterday I was missing some part of your answer, today I found it as right way to go.  Thanks!

Phew! Thanks for the confirmation! :^))

Since I have lot of objects I made some python shortcut based on John's answer
import bpy

bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()
bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='SELECT')

for area in bpy.context.screen.areas:
    if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
        ctx = bpy.context.copy()
        ctx['area'] = area
        ctx['region'] = area.regions[-1]
        bpy.ops.view3d.view_selected(ctx)
        bpy.ops.view3d.snap_cursor_to_selected(ctx)

bpy.context.scene.cursor.location[2] = 0
bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()
bpy.ops.object.origin_set(type='ORIGIN_CURSOR', center='MEDIAN')

bpy.context.object.location[0] = 0
bpy.context.object.location[1] = 0

edit:
This process put origin to the center of object based on geometry weight not into bounding box center.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/42105/set-origin-to-bottom-center-of-multiple-objects

Fast and easy:
In sidebar/tool/affect only, enable both "origins" and "locations".
Plop a cursor down on the bottom of your mesh.  Set pivot point to cursor.  Set orientation to local.
Scale to 0 in Z axis.  (Or whatever axis you want.)

Shown before and after.  Don't forget to change your "affect only" options back before you start doing other stuff.  Or, keep it on and repeat the operation for more objects; it's just a mouse click to plop a cursor and a single scale operation for each.

hi, i don't understand what should do "Set orientation to local. Scale to 0 in Z axis. " And also how to keep cursor in the middle of the XY object. If I stich cursor to the bottom polygon it stick wherever I click

@barberik Orientation and pivot point are choices made in the top middle of your 3D viewport.  To scale a selection to 0 in Z, type 's z 0' but not spaces and hit enter.  And it doesn't matter where the cursor is in relationship to the local XY of the object, because you're only scaling to 0 in Z: you are keeping the existing origin of the object, but placing it on the bottom margin of your object, as determined by your placement of cursor.

To have the origin at the center of a mesh's geometry while keeping the origin in its location, you can right-click on the selected object(s) in Object Mode to bring up the Object Context Menu and choose Set Origin > Geometry to Origin.
Before:

After:

Thanks for answer,  my problem is id like to keep one axis not moved. I have add images into question.

In that case, just choose 'Set Origin to Geometry'. That will move the origin without touching the location of the object.

But it will change the local Z of the origin, which they do not want

Ah ok. How about setting the 3D cursor to the centre of the object (Shift-S > Cursor to Selected), setting the 3d Cursor Z location to zero in the N panel and then Object >Set Origin to 3D cursor?

@JohnEason That could be a solution. It is very tedious if you have multiple objects, but better than nothing. When I wrote my answer it wasn't really clear what was the goal, so I'll just leave it here for someone with similar problems. But I would suggest you put your answer here, too. Although this changes the X and Y location of the origin - I'm still not sure if that would be okay or if the mesh has to move on X and Y.

But you have to set the cursor to the selected mesh in Edit Mode, otherwise it would just move to the origin so this wouldn't help anything.

I think we still need more details on exactly what the OP is trying to achieve before suggesting anything further, but yes, you would have to switch in and out of Edit mode for my suggestion which would be very time consuming for lots of objects.

@JohnEason Reading the question once again I think I get it now... your solution should work. Question says: "move origin to the center of the object while keeping Z location on 0m"

I have add some more images, sorry for my bad explanatory ability


text:
Scripting - How to create a game property?
I have a bunch of objects and need to create some common properties to all of them like this
for ob in bpy.data.objects:
    if ob.name.find("someName") >= 0:
        theObject = ob.game
        ...create new property in theObject, and set value
        ...create new property in theObject, and set value
        ...create new property in theObject, and set value
        ...create new property in theObject, and set value

The result should show the properties added to every object "someName" (someName.001, someName.002, etc) in the Logic Editor like this

There's the object.game.properties collection, but it doesn't seem to have a new method. You can use an operator to create the property, though, and then modify the value:
for ob in bpy.context.scene.objects:
    if ob.name.find("someName") >= 0:
        # Set active object first so operator works on the right one
        bpy.context.scene.objects.active = ob
        bpy.ops.object.game_property_new(type='STRING', name='foo')
        prop = ob.game.properties['foo']
        prop.value = 'bar'

I'm pretty sure the items in the list are kept in the order they are created, so you can also access the most recently-created property with ob.game.properties[-1].

Add the properties to the active object using:

bpy.ops.object.game_property_new(type='FLOAT', name="")
Create a new property available to the game engine

Then copy to the rest of your selection:

bpy.ops.object.game_property_copy(operation='COPY', property='')
Copy/merge/replace a game property from active object to all selected objects

E.g.
import bpy

bpy.ops.object.select_pattern(pattern="Cube*", extend=False)
if bpy.context.selected_objects:
    bpy.ops.object.game_property_new(type="STRING", name="foo")
    bpy.context.object.game.properties[-1].value = "bar"
    # ...
    bpy.ops.object.game_property_copy(operation="COPY")

Heres another method:
def addPropertyToObj(npType, npName, npVal, objPName, objPVal):
print('started..')
for obj in bpy.data.objects:
    for prop in  obj.game.properties:
        if prop.name== objPName and prop.value== objPVal:
            print("added new gameProperty to object: "+obj.name)
            bpy.context.scene.objects.active = obj
            bpy.ops.object.game_property_new(type=npType, name=npName)
            obj.game.properties[npName].value= npVal

will add the gameProperty: "npName" with type "npType" and initial value of "npVal" to ALL
objects in scene with an existing gameProperty called "objPName" with value "objPVal"
example: addPropertyToObj('BOOL', "usingFarModel", False, "structName", "MapleWood")
special thanks to z0r

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


text:
Blender collision sensor is triggered twice
I have this script with the module collision which is called when the player collides with any of two cylinders in the scene, the module increments the counter in a text object that in a separate scene that overlays the main scene
import bge

scene = bge.logic.getCurrentScene()

dynamicText = scene.objects['Text']

def collision():
    dynamicText.text = str(int(dynamicText.text)+1)

This the logic behind the cylinders that triggers the collision and send the message to the text object to increment the counter.

This is the login in the the text object

The problem is that the counter is incremented twice per collision, and I don’t see an obvious way to filter the second time the module is called.
This is the blend file.

If I remember correctly, collision sensors fire twice by design.  Once when set True, and another when False.
This isn't a problem when connected to an And or Not controller (because they check) but in a script you'll have to do something like this:
def collision(cont):
    # Loops through all connected sensors and returns if one is False
    # Basically makes it work like an And conroller.
    for sens in cont.sensors:
        if not sens.positive:
            return
    ...

Also this helped me to figure out a way to test only the sensor that receives the message sent by the colliding cylinder.

I don't know why message pulses twice but
I changed the logic on Text to message> property "collideCount" add 1
Then added an always sensor true level triggering at frequency 3
connected to script
import bge
scene = bge.logic.getCurrentScene()

dynamicText = scene.objects['Text']

def main():
    dynamicText.text = str(dynamicText["collideCount"])
main()

new logic http://ball2000.net/blender/images/messageBounce.png

I see what you mean, the first time message is triggered it adds 1 to collideCount, the second time it copies the value to text, also adding 0.5 each time messageis called could work too.

A good a theory as any; I honestly don't know why it works!  : )

Prof Monster doesn't say anything about messages pulsing twice; and I couldn't get the double-count thing to happen by modifying the 'homework...' or 'ending' the message-sending object..  Just something weird about your blend I think...
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?249078

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


text:
How can I model this distorted torus?
I'm trying to model a ring that is styled following this reference:

I'd like to make the distortions using geometry nodes and/or other modifiers such that they can be animated. Thinking the animation would probably be done by transforming the coordinate space of a texture, but I'm not sure what kind of modeling technique to follow for making the distorted hooky bits.
I wondered about doing this with shaders, i.e. a solid torus geometry with parts knocked off with transparency to achieve the effect. I feel it's probably doable with actual geometry though.
Edit: trying to improve on the vagueness, the specific thing that I'm stuck on is how to model the features circled below.

They look a bit like what the snake hook sculpting brush might be good for, but I'd like achieve them with nodes and/or modifiers.

Your description of what you want to achieve is rather vague... But what I can already tell you is that transparency isn't gonna work. The reason is that it will just cause holes in the mesh and not parts knocked off as you want.

If I understood the question correctly, you just want to move certain vertices of a ring outward and offset them radially, right?
...At least it looks like that on the picture. If I am wrong, please be so kind and clarify the question.
If I am correct, you could solve it as follows:

Use Curve to Mesh to create a ring.
Randomly select some vertices of the mesh with the node Random Value (set to Boolean).
Move them outwards along their normals, and rotate this vector a bit around the center.
I've made it a little more extreme than necessary, just to illustrate it better.

This is great considering how vague my question was :-}. It might be tricky to animate, but definitely give be a good base to start playing with!


text:
Necklace Physics
I'm trying to set up the physics to simulate a hanging necklace.
My strategy is to get:

A floppy string with rigid body physics
A rigid body pendant, with an eye hole through which to feed the string

I found this tutorial for setting up a curve to behave like the string, but it seems that curves can't be assigned rigid body physics.
What is the best approach to set up such a scene?

Create a chain of cubes using constraints, and then parent the empties to the cubes.

I can't quite figure it out.. can you explain in an answer please?

Line up a bunch of cubes, and then join the with constraints. After that, you can attach the control empties for the curve(like in the tutorial) to the cubes.


text:
Export Wavefront .mtl file -- Where is the reflectance coefficient?
It seems that when exporting a model, the output .mtl file does not include reflectance coefficient, which in blender is set using under "Mirror" in "Material".

The .mtl file is as follow:
# Blender MTL File: 'None'
# Material Count: 1

newmtl Material
Ns 96.078431
Ka 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
Kd 0.640000 0.640000 0.640000
Ks 0.500000 0.500000 0.500000
Ni 1.000000
d 1.000000
illum 2

Is there a way to include reflectance in this file?
Thanks in advance!

I'm not sure this is directly related to Blender, or Blender's .obj exporter. The wavefront file description mentions a set of 11 illumination models (from 0 to 10), none of which seem to specify explicitly any coefficient for reflection, merely that there is reflection:

Multiple illumination models are available, per material. These are
  enumerated as follows:
0. Color on and Ambient off
1. Color on and Ambient on
2. Highlight on
3. Reflection on and Ray trace on
4. Transparency: Glass on, Reflection: Ray trace on
5. Reflection: Fresnel on and Ray trace on
6. Transparency: Refraction on, Reflection: Fresnel off and Ray trace on
7. Transparency: Refraction on, Reflection: Fresnel on and Ray trace on
8. Reflection on and Ray trace off
9. Transparency: Glass on, Reflection: Ray trace off
10. Casts shadows onto invisible surfaces

Blender makes a distinction between specular reflection from lights and mirror reflection. In reality they are the same thing, and the OBJ file format also does not make any distinction, it has only one Ks value.

The way to actually specify the illumination model in the MTL file is by illum <MODEL>


text:
How do you overlay an image on a shader in Cycles?
I'm trying to overlay an image on top of a shader to create the effect of having printed onto metal like so:

I'm using an Anisotropic shader for the underlying brushed metal and have UV Mapped a PNG (with alpha channel) for the printed portions. I've tried using a Mix and an Add shader to combine the two but it doesn't give the effect I'm after. Instead, it looks like the metal was stained with a translucent film, rather than over-printed with an opaque ink/paint.
Here's my shader so far:

How can I achieve this over-printed effect?

Take the Alpha socket from your image, and plug it in to the Fac of the Mix Shader node. Then switch the Diffuse BSDF to the bottom socket of the Mix Shader, and the Anisotropic BSDF to the top shader socket.
The black and white alpha channel will control which parts of the material get which node. A value of 0 goes to the bottom socket and a value of 1 goes to the top socket.


text:
What is a sensible scale to work with?
I know the unit in Blender are arbitrary, e.g. you can have one unit represent 1cm, 1ft or 1 mile.
I'd like to know if there's an advised (community or otherwise) scale that I should work to.
Are there any issues that might occur from basing your scale too high or too low. e.g. 1 unit = 1mm or 1 unit = 1km?

It depends, if this only about modelling then you could chose any scale. But when you try to assemble your models in a scene they should have the same scale. Problems could occur with physics simulation when gravity and mass are involved objects would behave differently.

This is one of those times it would be good to have an answer from an experienced game developer(which I'm not).
I know that many of them struggle with precision issues because of large scenes which have a huge contrast between what is really big and what is really small. <- like shadow map resolution compared to the size of a mountain chain;  So if you have some things like mountains with numbers like 1000000.0 units. And then there are shadows with small numbers like .00001; once you perform math operations that combine these numbers, the smaller numbers can be damaged(loss of precision.

By default one BU = one meter.  This is a pretty reasonable size to go by as a rough guideline.
If you are modeling artistically you probably don't need to worry about units too much, but you should try to keep everything from ending up very small or very large, which could cause clipping issues in the viewport, making it difficult to work with. Though if this does happen, it's not hard to scale everything up/down.
If you are working precisely with units, then you can always set them the way you want in Properties > Scene > Units:

Thanks @gandalf3, the viewport clipping was exactly the kind of advice I was looking for.


text:
Can you add geometry to a mesh over time (frames) with Python?
I'd like to create an effect similar to a plant growing over time. Imagine, as the plant grows, it sprouts new leafs and shoots.
I know I can generate a mesh using Python, but can I add geometry to the mesh over time and if so how?

There are many possible ways of going about this without python,  e.g. the build modifier, animated bevel start/end factor, animated objects with boolean modifiers, etc.

@gandalf3 thanks, I'm looking to create a complex model (think Ivy or vines), would the methods you suggest be able to achieve this?

Hm.. Not sure without some experimentation. However it looks like someone already came up with at least one solution: http://www.blendernation.com/2012/01/30/tutorial-growing-ivygen-animation-in-blender/

One way is to use the Sapling addon to create a tree. The addon needs to be enabled first in the User Preferences

After the settings were adjusted.
Convert it from curve to mesh Alt-C
Add a Build Modifier to the stem and another one to the leaves, you might want to add a few more loop cuts Ctrl-R to the stem so that the segments are displayed one by one.
To let the plant grow scale it down say 10% on frame 1, 50% on frame 10, 100% on frame 20
Set the Build modifiers start frame to 20 and 30.
Result:

.blend


text:
What's the best way to extrude and expand complex objects?
I would make this mesh's extrusion be at about a 45° angle instead of a 90° angle.

Taking the bottom vertices and scaling them kind of gets what I want, but many vertices go the opposite direction that I want them to go, because every vertex is moving in relation to the center of the object:

How can I make the bottom vertices go like this?

try Alt+s which does Scale by Normals Direction.  It will also make the model wider so you may want to scale it the usual way back down along that one axis afterwards.

@MarcClintDion Care to add that as an answer?

Please do MarcClintDion, so I can mark it as correct. It was exactly what I was looking for.

@Gigazelle I think this is what you want http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1088/is-there-a-way-to-offset-an-edge-extrude-edge-loop-perpendicular-to-each-edge. Just extrude, select edges and then run that.

To scale something in the direction of the normals, you can use Alt + S
Using this tool, you can fatten a model or make it more slender.
For a model that has many thin parts that are close together like this one, there will likely be some overlapping parts when you fatten it so a bit of manual work will be needed to clean it up.

Using a LICEcap screen-capture .gif I show an easy way to clean up the overlapping edges.  I'm using the circle select tool C to select all the edges then with the selection tool still active use MMB to deselect the surrounding edges leaving only the one which is not visible.  That one edge  is not visible because it's facing directly in and out of the screen and the display cannot handle that situation but the line is still selected even though we can't see it.


text:
How do I merge 2 Grease Pencil vertices?
I have 2 Grease Pencil strokes each consisting of 2 vertices, where both start from the same spot. (see A in image)
Is there a way I can merge these 2 strokes into one continuous stroke consisting of only 3 vertices? (see B in image)
I'm looking for something like "Remove doubles" function when editing mesh, where it takes selected points and turns them all into a single point in the middle.
There is "Join strokes" function, but it doesn't do that, and instead only makes a new stroke between the disconnected ones - even if they are in exactly the same spot.
I can achieve what I want with "Join strokes" then selecting one of the 2 vertices then CTRL+X then "Dissolve", but I'm looking for a way to do that faster. Is there any?

In edit mode, select the first stroke and select the vertex you want to join.
Shift select the second stroke and select the next vertex to join.
Use Stroke > Join (or the shortcut ⎈ Ctrl+J)

Note that you cannot connect vertices that are not on the edges of a stroke.

This is the "Join strokes" function that I was referring to in my question. It simply joins the two points with a line between them, instead of merging them into one point, which is what I want.

You can enable Automerge while Drawing in Blender 2.92 (Download Daily Build)

Looks good, but is there a way to do this with strokes that are already made?

I'm using 2.92 and don't see an automerge button anywhere in the 2D Animation context.


text:
Outliner / properties etc dissapeared
This happened to me a couple times before, where i accidently click a key combination and it hides the outliner + other panels
Pressing CTRL UP / DOWN / LEFT / RIGHT does not bring anything back for me.
And restarting blender doesn't help..

How about CTRL- SPACE?

hey thanks for your reply. CTRL + Space doesn't do anything for me

Try this https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/160129/reload-interface-while-keeping-data   ie open a new file,  then open this one but don't load the UI.  After which look in the view menu > area .. ctlr -space and ctrl alt space are general shortcuts that maximize an area. Yours may be different.

Alright man, thanks. still think it's weird you can't just restore with the same hotkey that messed it up in the first place :(

Another thing to try,  is to right click on modelling tab and delete. Then on + at far right of tabs open default > modelling again.  Would say can restore, it's just a matter of which hotkey.

Since you are starting with blender don't start with the bad habt of modifying the interface so many times. Instead, create layouts or workspaces that work for your own personal workflow and stop messing around with the interface.  Read: how do I reset my view panels and Resetting UI on the viewport

What you have basically done is destroyed all areas except the 3-D view editor. Thankfully, you can easily bring them back by dragging the corners of the area to split it, then changing the new area to what you need (see the blender manual on “User interface”), or like one of the commenters said, you can open a new blend file, then open this one without loading its UI.


text:
Black noise around edges of an object in cycles render
I was just trying to bake a normal map for this mask model. The scene looks as follows:

With nothing unusual going on.
I try to test out the scene using cycles, but even without applying the normal map, I get this bizarre noise:

It looks like the sun light is throwing wrong shadows on the edges, as some of the splotches (though not all) go away when I turn off shadows. I'm thinking there is a problem with the settings for this mesh, though I can't find anything out of the ordinary.

Did you model this in blender or is this an imported object? Try deleting custom split normals.

Try decreasing the strength of the normal map node and see what happens.

@susu It is imported yes, deleing custom split normals leads to random sharp edges appearing over the model, I don't really understand what is going on, but it doesn't seem to fix the problem either way


text:
How can I model a decorative serving tray?

How can i model this? like beautiful line up modeling
I create the the outline and solidified it like this

But I don't know what to do afterwards.
I tried to bevel, but it doesn't work
Next I try to add subdivison surface, but my blender is dead....
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ao4Yx0pJrqq5j8VghFhNK0cV_-NSEQ

What is "this object"?  A decorative serving tray? Please consider editing title with something a little more specific.

You can:

Keep only a flat segment, simplify it as much as possible (actually it will depend on if you plan to use a Subdivision Surface modifier at the end) and mirror (enable the Clipping option of the Mirror modifier):

Create an empty a the center of the object, give your object an Array modifier, choose a Count of 8, disable Relative Offset, enbable Object Offset with the empty as Object:

Rotate the empty 45° on the Z axis:

Move the segment so that it doesn't overlap its instances, extrude inwards:

Extrude to give thickness with AltE > Extrude Faces Along Normals:

Make sure you don't create inner faces, if so, delete them:

Add geometry and bvels where needed:

Apply the modifiers, close the center, merge the vertices by distnace, stretch on the X axis:

definitively the easy way for a newbie LOL...

wow you are best......thanks  a lot it is so easy tutorial thangk!!

You can use a simple starting profile part and add some modifiers:

That allows to simplify your modelling, handle muc less vertices and adjust things easily before finishing the model.
the modifiers are the following:

Mirror as each part is symmetrical
Array to tune the amount of parts
Simple deform/bend to round the shape
Weld to remove doubled vertices
Subdivision

Additionally the object is stretched to be oval (parented to an empty that is scaled along an axis).
The main interest is to give the ability to change the model easily:

When happy with the result, you can apply all the modifiers (except the subdivision, maybe) and grid fill the inner part.

this is a bit complex to explain in several steps, so here i gonna leave the blend file  , and some steps of how i made it...
1- add circle, press ctrl+2 to add surf-subdiv modifier and start deforming the vertices as wished...

2- bevel some of those vertices, and slide some of them...

3- add one vertex in the center, and select 2 verts and conect them to make a 2 edges, and then select the other boundary vertices and press f to fill it...

4- start adding some cuts with the knife tool, and then smooth it out a bit...

5- then use insert faces to extrude several loops of faces down, and then smooth several times this faces, and add more support loops to the edges and add topology to needed areas to create the pinching......

7- then when you are done, select all the mesh and extrude it down, flatten it, and smooth several times, and add some loops to the edges...

try as possible to get beautiful topology like this <3...takes some time to master topology i have to say...

Tip: use symetrize option in edit mode, or mirror modifier for more quick editing and equal symmetry as possible...

So as you have 4 symmetrical parts don't you use a Mirror modifier? (Except it looks like a 8 sections plate)

yes, but i applied it


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Plane to circle get "pinched" corners
I'm trying to figure out a way to make the ellipse shape even, right now the inner elliptical shape is even all the way around except in the corners where the shape get skinnier. is there a way to make all faces of that inner shape even?
here's images of my problem

I personally don't see any other solution than delete the inner ellipse and re-extrude inwards, bevel, etc.
If you want to redo this kind of shape from scratch, here are several ways to do it, the less destructive would be with a curve, but if you begin with a mesh you can now custom the profile:

Create your ellipse object, select the top edge:

Bevel it with CtrlB, give it enough segments:

Enable the Custom option and draw your profile:

A similar custom profile has also been implemented for the curves, go in the Properties panel > Object Data > Geometry > Bevel and click on Profile:

You will have much more control on the bevel shape if you use the Object option though:

Or of course you can use a mesh as a profile along a curve with the Array and Curve modifiers:

Thank you @moonboots  started out by making a plane, subdivided a few times and converted the square shape to a circle which I scaled on the X axes to make the circle an ellipse. then I modeled the the shape form there. the custom bevel function was not an option when I designed this (blender 2.80 I believe) Is there a way where I can make the faces have even width without starting over?

you can delete all the part that is not even, select the new inner ellipse and extrude inwards

Thank you again, I think that might be the best solution.

Yes, if you don't want to start from scratch I don't see another solution but maybe someone has a better one...


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Animation nodes - Replicate splines - random bevel size
Id like to build set of spline with applied vector noise to simulate lightnings. I have followed Chris.P. tutorial and its done.
But I have two problems.
How can I set different Bevel Depth on each spline? It seems like Curve Object Output doesn't support list, only single value.
Second question is how can I set specific Bevel Depth for each point but on each spline specifically?
It can be random, but each spline should have different random sizes.
Third question is there any node which can from input 1,2,3 make 111,222,333?
Thanks a lot.
I want to control thickness of each spline

I think, I got solution.
I don't know how I did it but it seems works ..)

I still don't understand  How Input loop works and why there is "Spline input" and "Curve output" (naming) but the tool is pretty powerful.

Here is a solution for your third question. It takes four AN-nodes if want a number as a result. If a text will do you can skip the last node.

Interresting, solution, but its not that. Thanks


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BKE_bpath_absolute_convert: basedir='', this is a bug
I am getting this error in the terminal after running my script(2.79b). What am I supposed to do?
This is basically my script
import bpy
import os
import glob
import time
import tempfile

fname = bpy.path.basename(bpy.context.blend_data.filepath)

 fname = os.path.splitext(filename)[0]

 tempFolder=tempfile.gettempdir()

 finalpath=os.path.join(tempfolder,fname)

 bpy.ops.wm.save_as_mainfile(filepath=finalpath, copy=True)

thanks

You're supposed to give us some information we can use to solve your problem. What script are you running? Have you tried minimising your script to the absolute minimum number of lines of code to reproduce this issue?

You're not importing any Python modules?

Sorry did not  think it wsa relevant. I added the imports

You're assigning to fname but then you're using filename in the next line. Same for tempFolder and tempfolder. This runs without error:
import bpy
import os
import tempfile

filename = bpy.path.basename(bpy.context.blend_data.filepath)
fname = os.path.splitext(filename)[0]
tempfolder = tempfile.gettempdir()
finalpath = os.path.join(tempfolder, fname)
bpy.ops.wm.save_as_mainfile(filepath=finalpath, copy=True)


text:
How do I fix bpy.ops.object.mode_set.poll() failed, context is incorrect?
I am trying to convert a metaball object to a mesh, but I cant pass this stage. I am basically stuck. I checked out all the bpy.context and context override and bpy.ops  posts and documents and i still can't make these 2 ops work :( I do not understand why they need special context.
Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "C:\Users\USER\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.80\scripts\addons\Dupper\__init__.py", line 95, in dupper
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT', toggle=False)
  File "C:\BLENDER_28\2.80\scripts\modules\bpy\ops.py", line 200, in __call__
    ret = op_call(self.idname_py(), None, kw)
RuntimeError: Operator bpy.ops.object.mode_set.poll() failed, context is incorrect

location: <unknown location>:-1

location: <unknown location>:-1

def makedup(obj):

    object=obj

    bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
    bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = object
    object.select_set(True)

    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT', toggle=False)
    bpy.ops.object.convert(target='MESH')

class Dupper(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "object.dupper"
    bl_label = "dupper"

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return True

    def execute(self, context):

        bpy.ops.wm.open_mainfile(filepath=str(FILE))

        object=bpy.data.objects["mball"]

        makedup(object)

        return {'FINISHED'}

Recommend you remove bpy.ops.wm.open_mainfile(filepath=str(FILE))  Ask yourself do you really want to trash the file you are in by opening another with this operator.?  Add a print(context.copy()) before and after the operator to examine if  the context is  "refreshed" to be that of the newly opened file. Eg context.scene of file A from within  the script is run does not automatically become the  context.scene of newly loaded file B...

Thanks, I will try that. You recommend to remove open_mailfile, but how do I open a .blend file in a script that? Is it impossible to do?

You can open a blend file with bpy.ops.wm.open_mainfile(...) The issue is the context  directly after opening  the file with the operator (like above).  Did you examine the difference in context, pre and aft?  Why not convert the objects in the blend you are in? (which your code will do if you remove the open mainfile operator)  . Why the need to open another file to convert?  Look into running in background mode where you can pass the file and the script via command line (or call in python  with for example subprocess.Popen("blender -b foo.py -P convert_meta.py".split(" ")).

I am not around my desktop yet, I will try your options and write back here. Basically I am opening the file because I am modifying some options in that file and then I need to save it back as a different file. I do not understand your comment about converting? Do you mean saving objects as a .obj type thing? I will investigate the mode, I assume I can get the blender.exe path properly so I can pass it? In any case thanks for the recommendations

Ok I tried running the subprocess method, it might work except that I cant make Blender to to load my local module (local to the script) :(

@batFINGER so I tried spawning a new Blender, it works. Almost, I hit another block with context error when I am trying to run "bpy.ops.sculpt.dynamic_topology_toggle()" in the script :( Any recommendation? I tried running it in the calling script and the running script without much luck :( I am saving the scene in the script runs in the subproces, then I open the scene in main Blender process.


text:
Edge effects on almost completely transparent objects
I've got a semi-transparent outer block, and two semi-transparent inner blocks. I'm trying to animate the inner blocks fading out by bringing the transparency alpha to zero. I'm using Blender Internal.
My model looks like this:

These are wax blocks, with objects embedded inside. First, the small inner blocks are created separately as 2x1 blocks. Then they're placed next to each other to make a large 2x2 block. Once the outer wax is in place (a boolean modifier/plane reveals the outer wax) the inner wax should fade away, "melting" as it's replaced by the the outer wax.
The problem I'm having is that the sharp edges of the inner wax don't fade away as alpha approaches zero. My guess about what's going on is the amount of light that's reflected off the inner faces is unaffected by their material's transparency.
Effectively, I don't like the discontinuity between when alpha is very small, and when alpha is zero. Here's is the difference between the inner blocks transparency alpha at 0.001, and 0.000:

Would it work to delete the inner face? (or give it some thickness?)

Hmm.. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by giving it thickness, but I could give it a try. The inner blocks are outside and off by themselves earlier in the animation though, so I don't think deleting the face is an option.

I'm not entirely sure what you want. could you upload your .blend or make a mockup of how you want it to look? (nvm about giving it thickness, I thought that the inner block was one object with an internal face) Also, just to be clear, is the "nasty edge" an intersection of the two inner block objects?

See if my edits make more sense.. if not, I'll do up a .blend file.

Thanks, it makes sense now. I fiddled around a bit, but I can't figure out how to make it go away. (I don't use BI much anymore)

Oh nooo!! Thanks for trying though :) I've been getting the feeling I'm shooting myself in the foot by investing time learning BI..

I tested this in Cycles, and while the edge is still there, it fades out gradually with the rest of the block.

Is the outer block raytraced or Z Transparency?

Hey, I think you solved it! It looks way better when I change the outer wax to z-transparency!

Is it time for the author of the question to post an "answer" which outlines the pros and cons of the various fixes he tried (with credit to the originators) and which he settled on as the "solution" to his specific problem ?

@ajwood I'm still not sure what you want, but if you solved it, it would be nice if you could add an answer to help others with the same problem.. :)

@gandalf3: woah, this is so old I'll have to figure out myself what I wanted :P I'll take a look this weekend and put something up.

@ajwood This is close to being closed, can you post an answer?

Oh jeeze, I forgot about this again! I'll post an answer tonight!

Turns out the problem goes away if I switched the transparency of the outer block from raytraced to z-transparency.


text:
Transitioning the overlap of multiple objects
I'm trying to fade an object's regular solid surface into its wireframe.
I've got as far as duplicating the object and deleting vertices until I'm left with an area of overlap.

Is it possible to render this in such a way that there is a smooth transition at the area of overlap? Maybe there is a better way to achieve this effect?
Another example:

What does "fade an object's regular solid surface into its wireframe" mean? You want to animate it as a diffuse and then it slowly turns transparent, showing the wireframe? There's a way to do that. What does "a smooth transition at the area of overlap" mean?

I just want a single frame render. The render I posted is of two hemispheres which overlap a little bit. I'd like the area where they overlap to be "blurred" such that instead of the solid surface ending and the wireframe starting, there is a "transition/fade" from surface to wireframe.

So you want it to be gradually more transparent on that last ring of faces till it fades to fully transparent?

That would probably achieve the look I'm going for, yeah

You can do this using the compositor and different scenes. This method uses three scenes: one for the regular shaded sphere, one for the wireframe and one that we will use as a factor input to blend between the two. Maybe there are better ways to do this.

I am assuming you have you scene set up with a sphere, plane, and the lights.

Rename the current scene to something like sphere_shaded to be able to differentiate it better form the other we will create

Create a Full Copy of the scene and rename it to something like sphere_wireframe

Make sure you are in the sphere_wireframe scene: Select the sphere and add a Wireframe Modifier to it

Go back to the sphere_shaded scene and create another Full Copy, let's call it sphere_fac
In the sphere_fac scene delete everything besides the sphere and the camera
In the the same scene add a lamp, I will chose an area lamp but any other will do
Change the background of the scene to black

go the World Panel -> Surface -> Color

Position the light so that half of the sphere visible to the camera is getting light and the other half is in the shadows.

To make this task easier you can got into the camera view and turn and set the viewport type to rendered

Render out all scenes, F12
Switch to the Node Editor and switch to the compositing nodes. Enable use nodes and backrdrop

Add in the other render scenes

By default there should be one render scene already in the node view, duplicate it and form the name drop down choose the others.

Add a Color -> Mix node

Fac: plug in sphere_fac
Image: sphere_shaded
Image: sphere_wireframe

To get more control over the transition you can adjust the sphere_fac node a bit

RGB curves: good control, a little overkill I think for this
Brightness/Contrast: to simple
Color Ramp: simple, enough control

I will use a Color Ramp in this case: Converter -> Color Ramp adjust the two slider on either side to your liking

Final Result

Same technique with a point lamp

Hmm.. this lighting method will only work when it's a nice sphere. I'd like to actually do this on a more complex object.

@ajwood in that case you can use a simple gradient as an image for the effect.

I don't think a simple gradient would work. The boundary between shaded and wireframe could be any shape.

According to what you illustrated, I would propose a non-compositing way by using modifiers only:

Enter Edit Mode, Select one face as where the transition starts, ShiftS > Cursor to Selected to snap cursor to that face;
Select all faces, press Spacebar and search for Sort Mesh Elements, choose Cursor Distance in the popup menu, press F6 and toggle Reverse;
Create a duplication for the original object, repeat the last two steps on it, just leave Reverse untoggled;
Add Build modifier to the original object, toggle Reverse in the modifier stack;
Add a Wireframe modifier and a Build modifier to the duplicated object, leave Reverse untoggled this time.

After tweaking the modifier settings a bit, you will simply get something like this when playing animation:

Example file FYI.

I see you would like the SMOOTH way here. In that case, you have to use nodes. Anyway, just wanna share with this trick, supposing it would be also useful for some cases.

You can achieve the same effect with the following material setup:

Detail of node setup:

If you want the blur to conform to the shape of the hole, put a black and white UV/image texture node in the factor slot of your mix shader instead. You will have to paint the texture yourself with texture painting or in photoshop, but once you have it UV mapped onto your object, it will achieve the effect you're looking for (I think).
See this, it tells you how to use an image mask as a mix factor for a material in cycles:
Add different materials to different parts of a mesh?

This would be perfect if I could get a texture that measures the distance to the "edge" of the object (my vocabulary is hurting... "unclosed edge"?)


text:
How can I scale these objects without breaking their relationships?
I have this setup:

Duplicate part of a big mesh, and separate it into a new object
Hook each vertex of the new object to an empty
Parent each empty to the corresponding vertex of the original mesh

Now if the base mesh is deformed (shape key, cloth sim, etc.), the separated object follows it.

Now I've realized that my model is too large, so I'd like to scale everything down, but I can't get it quite right:

How can I apply a scale without breaking the setup?

Instead of CtrlA->Apply Scale, I needed CtrlA->Scale to Deltas.


text:
Can a texture be baked to an object that doesn't have a UV map?
I have a object like this that I'm animating with shape keys:

I have a material on the basis object, based on its geometry:

Is it possible to bake the output from the color ramp node onto the basis vertices? I'd like those values to follow through the animation, rather than recalculating the geometry at each frame.

In Blender Internal there's an option to bake to vertex colors, but you'll have to rebuild your node setup for that render engine. Could you tell what are you doing with the two vector math nodes? I'm not sure to fully understand what's going on. I mean...if you change object location, the whole map change? Is this the intended behaviour?

It's a way to identify the internal foldy bits (from this answer: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/41894/822). It's essentially comparing the mesh normal to its normalized position; in other words, is my normal pointing the same way as a line to me from my origin?  The procedure is more important to me than the outcome though.. I'd like to get some arbitrary cycles values baked onto the mesh so I can visualize how they move around with the shape keys.


text:
having problems using Texture Paint and Clone Stencil
I'm having problems with texture painting on the latest version (2.90.1).
I add a cube mesh, open an image and pack it, link the image to the cube in materials tab by selecting "Image Texture" as "Base Color", then I go to Texture Paint tab and start painting. You can see what happens in the pictures.

Picture 1: A simple cube with a texture.

Picture 2: Painting on the image viewer. Nothing shows up on the 3D
view.

Picture 3: With same settings, painting on the 3D view. It appears
correctly on the image viewer but strangely on the 3D view.

Also I can't make the stencil in stamp tool work.
I click the "Clone" tool, then I go to "Texture Properties" tab and click "New", in the same tab under Image>Settings I choose an image. Then from the header of "Clone" tool, I click "Texture" and select the texture that I just created. And set the "Mapping" to "Stencil". This makes the stencil appear on both 3D and image view and it is scalable and rotatable the way it's supposed to be; but left-clicking on it doesn't paint anything in either places.

Saving the image once solves the painting problem. Also, using the stencil in brush tool instead of clone tool seems to serve the same purpose so I'll be using that instead.


text:
How to improve boolean modifier on SVG logo
Rookie asking again.
I imported .SVG logo into blender to make it 3D. My idea was extrude different components and then drill the hole by boolean modifier.
Obviously I must be missing something as the boolean draw only edges into other object, but did not make holes. Let see if you could see the issue from the following picture:

The edges I have selected are from bottom. Inside of those selection you can see the edges coming from boolean modifier. The same is on roof (not selected edges).
Total different question is, why there were few vertexes outside of the object. There were not many <10. The edges to the vertexes are those few going down.
Is there something I could change on this? At first I though this was because I forgot to fill all caps, but that (alt + f) did not solved the issue.
...or is there total different and better way of doing this.

Curves converted to meshes yield bad topology most of the time. On top of that booleans will create new problems. Try to create the logo with all of it's holes and detail in whatever vector drawing program you are using (inkscape, illustrator or so). https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/184543/bevel-modifier-not-working-on-mesh/184547#184547

Also, please ask only one question per post.

Thank you @susu, that link was very good! I have always thought that boolean is my friend and that will solve all my problems. But I really did not though in a way to finalize the shape on Inkscape.

Booleans are treacherous friends, beware of them. They can be wonderful in just a few situations, but mostly you want to stay away from them.


text:
How to detect drag and move left mouse down in a modal operator?
I would like to be able drag and move mouse to adjust some parameter inside a modal operator. I can detect mouse clicks, or a release but I have not been able to find a way to do mouse press down and drag  to increase or decrease values.
Basically I would like to be able to press a key and drag  mouse to change some values. For instance I press down f and start dragging mouse to change a value.
Any recommendations?
thanks

Maybe use a flag variable to save the pressed state?


text:
How can I run Bmesh ops interactively inside an operator with a popup?
I would like to add some bmesh operators to one of my operator class. The operator has pop up menu invoked by return wm.invoke_props_dialog( self) so the values are edited interactively.
Here is a relative portion of my code inside execute
def execute(self,context):
    me = bpy.context.object.data

    bm = bmesh.new()   # create an empty BMesh
    bm.from_mesh(me)   # fill it in from a Mesh

    bmesh.ops.smooth_vert(bm, verts=bm.verts, factor=self.smoothvertices, mirror_clip_x=False, mirror_clip_y=False, mirror_clip_z=False, clip_dist=0.0, use_axis_x=True, use_axis_y=True, use_axis_z=True)

    bm.to_mesh(me)
    bm.free()

    return {'FINISHED'}

This works but after couple fiddles Blender just disappears, I guess it makes sense in a way probably the memory is not handled well in this occasion.
What is the right way to handle an interactive smoothing or similar operations using the Bmesh operators inside an instance of a bpy.types.Operator?
Sample Operator Code (Use it on high res object in Object Mode)
https://paste.debian.net/hidden/e93c95b8/
This seems to be the end of the log when it crashes when run with debug flag. I also have remeshing prior to smooth and some others.
redo_cb: operator redo Remesh meshes
Warning: No mesh data to join
Error   : Unrecognized Exception
Address : 0x00007FFF87993FB8
Module  : C:\Windows\System32\KERNELBASE.dll

EDIT1: I wonder if this is more of an issue with the remesh operator than the bmesh operator.
EDIT2: My other suspicion is that hitting the default 32 undo step inside an operator might be the culprit.
thanks

Running in object mode?  Could you please post a minimal working version code? ie one we can run to test ourselves.

@batFINGER  Yes I am running it as object mode operator. I added a trimmed down sample operator.

Hi. Please add your code directly into the question instead of linking to it.

Ray such post are plain unreadable because makes it hard to follow the whole post due to lenght, linking pastes is a legit posting method.


text:
How do I modify vertex groups weights with Geometry Nodes in Blender 3.0?
I am trying to modify the weights of a vertex group in Blender 3.0 in Geometry nodes but I am not able to do it properly. I can't create weights like values instead of boolean type values.
As you can see in the image, the values seem to come out as 0 or 1
therefor the coverage in the second geonodes is not gradual.

The blend file
https://pasteall.org/blend/882db18f1e4b4030959a2ff85702da61
Thanks

You made nearly everything right.
You just have to adapt two things:
change your selection output type from boolean to float (in first gn)

change your selection input type from boolean to float (in second gn)

Result:

Hey thanks for the reply, that seemed to get alot of things going in my scene but I still cant get that nice transition :( Blend file https://pasteall.org/blend/f454eca7fa03476791fe015e14a402cf    Screen https://pasteall.org/pic/f68f34cba51b41399ccdbd8dfb40a429

in your file, just change distance min to 0 and distance max to 26 and you will get [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/iYXPi.png. But if you have further/other questions, please open another question, because i answered your question already. And you should ask only one question...

In 3.0 RC, vertex groups are modified like you're showing: you plug a noodle into an empty output, and in your modifier stack, you designate one of your vertex groups as this output:

The nearer mesh shows our "base" orientation; we assign it to "Group" via geo nodes; and then we displace on the basis of Group, demonstrating this working.  It is not Boolean, but gradual, as you want.
Something else is responsible for you not getting the output you expect.  You didn't ask about that, but if you do in a future question, we would need more information to answer it, preferably an entire file.  It may be because you didn't designate Group as an input to your second geo nodes modifier (can't see because it's collapsed.)  You may be seeing strange behavior because your vertices all have a very large or small (maybe negative) Y location, relative to the origin of their object, and those values get clamped by your color ramp to 1 or 0 respectively.  Or, there may be some other reason.

Hi, thanks for the reply. I added the .blend file tom my post.


text:
Colourful terrazzo material
How could I make this sprinklish colourful dot material from this picture?

Source: https://www.behance.net/gallery/73394167/Radical-Everything


text:
How can I view a Displacement texture on a model
I'm making some textures for use in displacement modifiers. The only way I know to view how the texture fits on a model, is it assign to a modifier, and watch how the mesh changes as a function of the texture.
Instead of watching how a modifier changes the mesh, is it possible to simply draw the texture on the surface?  Setting texture-mode in field highlighted below only seems to work for Cycles textures.

Note: I'm working with procedural textures

In your question you are asking about Blender Internal, but in the comments on the answer below you seem to be asking a different question about Cycles. Please edit your question to clarify what you are actually asking about.

Ah, I thought the textures that we create in the Texture tab from the Properties window were called "Blender Internal textures", as opposed to "Cycles textures", which we use in Cycles materials. I'm trying to refer a texture that can be dropped in a Displacement modifier - what should call it, if not a BI texture?

It's only a BI texture if you are rendering with BI. In your screenshot you just have a Displace Modifier Texture. There isn't really an official way to describe that other than referring to the modifier it's for.

It's pretty much the same as in Cycles.

Add a light to your scene (a sun, for example)
Tab into edit mode, unwrap your plane
Add a material with a texture to your plane
switch 3D view to "Rendered"

I don't think I was clear in my question.. I'm using Cycles, but trying to develop textures to use in my modifiers. Do I really need to switch to BI to develop the textures, then switch back to Cycles after I'm done?

AFAIK there is no disadvantage to switch from Cycles to internal. I'm doing it all the time when I create game assets.


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Jittering location in animation
I'm trying to jitter an object's location during an animation, and be able to control the strength of the hitter. I tried keyframing the strength of a noise f-curve modifier, which doesn't work:
Failed to resolve path to property, try manually specifying this using a Keying Set instead

Is there a good way to jitter the location of an object, and change the strength of the jitter throughout the animation?

can switch to drivers ?it would be easier

Not sure how to do that.. Which driver var could I use to jitter the location?

you have the same modifiers in the drivers as for F-curve and on top of that you can scripted expression , you can also have the same f-curve for an empty then use the empty loc as driver for the object

I don't think that allows me to change the intensity of the noise jitter throughout the animation though, does it?

I updated the question to make less of an assumption about how to achieve the animation technique..

I see your trying to do meta-animation :) From my understanding, this is not possible since these buttons don't have RNA paths, because they're not controlled by Python, but rather C++. This, in the current system, means these values cannot be animated in any way; thus, the only way to do this, would be using something other than F-Curves - probably a script which animates the "jitter" with keyframes, which, however, seems rather inefficient.

In this test scene:

the empty has the original animation
the cube copies the empty animation and adds some random value
the amplitude of the random value is controlled by cube property :

this is the driver of the X_loc of the cube :

this is the animation while changing the cube property :

@ajwood you can keyframe the cube property ,change the noise function check this page


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Can we keyframe hair particle brownian motion?
Is there a good reason to be unable to keyframe a hair particle system's brownian motion? Or is it a bug? I can't change this value, because its keyframe at another frame prevents it from being changed.

The same seem to be true for all of the particle system settings.

correction: hair particle system settings

Yes that is a bug. When the type is set to hair most keyed settings are snapping back to the keyed value which prevents new keyframes being added or adjusted from the properties panels. This is not hair only settings, physics, field weights and force field weights are also affected, while render settings do work properly.
For a workaround you can add keyframes and adjust settings in the graph editor once a value has a keyframe.

Sorry, I'm afraid my question wasn't clear.. Since the value is keyframe'd on another frame, I'm unable to change the value to keyframe on a different frame. In other words, the first keyframe seems to lock the value across the whole scene.

Is somebody going to file a bug report, or is everyone keen on just leaving it broken? Or... has a bug report already been filed and just not addressed yet? Let's bring this to developers' attention if it hasn't been already.

I have just created a bug report for this.

Yes we can change the keyframe, Just active Regrow option in particle setting.


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Vertex Paiting slightly hidden parts of the mesh
I'm Vertex Painting an object that is has small depressions and bumps. When I make a stroke from some angle, there seem to be a bunch of vertices that don't receive the stroke.
In the following image, I painted a stroke in the top-right panel. It looks a smooth swath was painted, but as can be seen from the other views, many vertices were missed.

Is it possible to configure the brush to avoid missing vertices in a situation like this?
p.s. Not sure if it's relevant, but I'm painting with exact colours (i.e. I set the brush curve shape to constant, to be sure that the colour on my brush is the colour that actually makes it on the mesh).

I think that is not possible to configure the vertex paint brush with the options provided by Blender at this time (2.75a) without scripting yourself the tool you need.
The vertex brush simply cannot "see" the face, probably because it's normal is not facing the brush projection enough...or something like that...
I'm not a coder as you might have guessed, but I can suggest to you two alternatives workflows:
1-Texture paint-->Vertex Color

UV unwrap your model
Create a texture
Paint your colors on the texture
Install and use the Bake Uv-Texture to Vertex colors add-on

By painting with the texture tools you'll be able to access the "Normal threshold" options that make you able to define a custom range for your brush

Than you can extract color info from the texture map through the add-on and bake them to vertex color
Result:

2 - Edit mode, expand and contract selection

Go to Edit mode
Select faces
Ctrl+"+" to expand till filling holes
Ctrl+"-" to reduce selection to the initial size
Go to Vertex paint, set "face selection masking" on to work only on
the selected faces
Shift+"k" to paint the brush color on the active faces

This works only if you are using solid colours, without blending ramps on the border or other features that the vertex paint is able to achieve.
And of course you have to iterate the process for every different colour (and without the possibility to see what you have done before).
Before expanding and contracting selection:

After:

Setting color to selected faces in edit mode:


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Is it possible to make glares brighter
I have planned to use the glare as a simple light flash, kind of camera flare.
I noticed the glares are quite dark:

It looks nice with dark background, but on the main animation, it pretty much vanishes.
Question: Is there a possibility to made these brighter? I tried to use "Bright/Contrast", but that impact to the full area. I did not manage to impact only to the glares.

Perhaps use the color correction node to raise the highlights without affecting the lows.

@AllenSimpson perfect ! I'll try that ! Big thanks!

It looks to me like you’ve got the glare affect set to low. Turn it up. If that doesn’t work, separate the glare effect from the main image, brighten the glare, and then mix them back together, instead of using the glare effect’s automatic mixing.

The "low" option on the glare node does not adjust it's intensity. It is meant to choose a resolution for the glare node to compute on. It is unrelated to the problem.

@EricXue I disagree. While it does only make the glare larger not brighter, that means that the area that still has most of the original light intensity is larger. You can’t really make it much brighter without just making flat white because of the monitor’s max output range.

I did a few test renders, and the outcome was the complete opposite of what you describe. The "High" setting on the glare node actually produced the glare with the smallest area, and the "Low" setting produced the largest glare. It seems that higher resolutions define the area of brightness much better.

@EricXue 8-/ your blender is from the twilight zone.

using the multiplier is good, cause multiplying a smaller number has less effect than multiplying a big number, you can do a bit of subtraction if you want.
I am mainly a modeler, I am not that good at shaders and compositing. Hopefully, this helps.


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How do i get rid of this red dotted rectangle?
I can't figure out how to get rid of this red dotted line in the middle of the viewport.

The red checkered box is a render region.
It's used to render only parts of your screen.
Clear it using Ctrl+Alt+B
Or through View > View Regions

Read: Render Border's related check boxes - How do they work?


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How to maximize a view from quad view (ex. front ortho)?
After I toggle the quad view, how can I maximize the front or any other ortho views? Just the CTRL + Up only hides some panels but it doesn't maximizes the view completely like the perspective view gets maximized.

In Quad View, you have to toggle off the Lock button first, then move the mouse cursor over one of the four views, press Ctrl Alt Q again.

Didn't see cegaton's comment linked to an already answerd question... This question is sort of duplicate indeed. Whatever, here is just a simple GIF for a quick illustration.

Right. Fairly related  :)


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Ignore objects for navigation in viewport
I'm facing an issue when trying to view some relatively small objects from a different angle by clicking the large planes by mistake which will throw me away from the object.
A temporary fix was hiding the large planes from the viewport but I'm struggling with this issue especially when working with materials from the materials panel on the right side because I need to see how they are interacting with the environment "the large planes".
is there any method to make Blender ignores any attempt to navigate through the large planes as if they were "hidden"?

You can make them unselectable.
In the outliner click on the funnel icon to open the filter controls. Enable the controls for selectability:
The arrow icon controls if an object is selectable.

Just for reference, the other icons are:
Selectability (mouse cursor icon)
This is useful for if you have placed something in the scene and do not want to accidentally select it when working on something else.
Eye hides object in the viewport
Camera prevents the object from rendering
Monitor: Hides the object in all viewports
Square with a circle: Holdout.
Twisted Arrow: Indirect light only
For more info on how to use the outliner read:
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/outliner/index.html

@susu has it. There's also an option to hold Alt while left-click selecting. You are then presented with a menu of objects under the cursor in the current view, to select from.


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The object used as boolean appears in the rendered image, even though it was disabled in the viewport

When I applied the boolean modifier (and hide from view the cylinder at the bottom) it shows when I am editing. But when I render, the cylinder still shows up like in the picture, but when I duplicate (the one on the right), it works. How to fix this problem?
I'm using the blender 2.91 on windows

Did you exclude the cylinder from rendering.. like the other one?

To exclude from rendering use the camera icon https://i.sstatic.net/n7mzB.gif

TY!!! @susu that's what I wanted I thought I only needed to hide in viewport


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Play sound from the file browser window before selecting the file?
How can I listen to the sound, while on the file browser window, before selecting the file?

Sorry, it's a bit hard to tell from your question what you need help with. Could you maybe provide a bit more detail about what you're trying to do, and where you're stuck?

There is not such feature in blender. @susu thanks for edit

@vklidu that is the answer indeed.

When selecting a sound or sound effect, I want to hear it before selecting it to put it into the Sequencer panel.


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Importing a STEP file with multiple objects inside it
How do you import STEP files in Blender?
Usually I do it using FreeCAD; I open the STEP file and export it to STL, then import the STL file in Blender and it's all done.
That works flawlessly when there is only a single object/part/whatever you wanna call it, the only very small issue you can have is that sometimes the origin can get messed up, but fixing that is as simple as right clicking and going to Set Origin and selecting your favorite option.
But, when there are multiple objects present inside the STEP file, things change a lot. Converting the STEP file to STL gives you the whole structure, but it's no longer separate objects, it's all in one object, meaning you can't work on it anymore and it's just a brick that's just there. Note that I've tried with multiple files and programs, I've tried with the aforementioned FreeCAD, CAD Assistant, and several other tools online.
Also I've seen someone say on here that they've used CAD Assistant to convert the STEP file in .gltf/.glb, but importing a file with those extensions gave me these errors (for .gltf and for .glb), and I'm not very sure it doesn't do the same thing.
Am I doing it wrong? Like, am I omitting something, or am I using the wrong file format to export to? I'm not very experimented in this, I've only been using Blender, or any 3D software for that matter, for maybe three months very irregularly so go easy on me lol, I've just found simple and basic stuff that worked for me for now. And, don't recommend me that paid extension, since I'm pretty sure there's other alternatives too
Also, if anyone's asking what I'm trying to import in Blender, here it is.

Andy, I hope you were able to find an easy, economical solution. I stumbled on your question 8 months later and wanted to share how I accomplished importing assemblies into Blender (while keeping parts separate) so that anyone else who finds this post later has at least one solution.
I imported the STEP file into Rhino, selected all, and performed ExplodeBlock. Then I exported to a COLLADA, which I was able to import directly into Blender. I realize that not everyone will have access to Rhino and that this solution isn't ideal for everyone, but it's one way to accomplish what you want.

May I suggest you invest ~15 bucks for the STEPper importer addon made by ambi?
https://ambient.gumroad.com/l/stepper
It supports automatic grouping of multiple objects/assemblies in the STEP file (empties or collections). This should be just what you're looking for.
Additional features: sharp edge detection, preservation of assigned materials - and if needed, it's even possible to rebuild specific parts of the imported assembly on-the-fly.
I never did regret buying this one. FreeCAD makes me itch.


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Voxel data in Cycles
Is Cycles able to render voxel data from an external file?
I can create the volumetric effects that I'm interested in by plugging a texture node into volume absorption and volume scatter shaders, then into an add shader. What I'm lacking is being able to use my own data, rather than only the built-in textures.

Do you wan't to use the results from smoke simulations, or files produced by external applications?

External application.. I've got it in 8-bit raw for now, but I could convert it whatever is needed..

I can image a hack using image texture and a clever input vector.. but I'm not sure..

I don't think it's possible currently, aside from hacks or converting to blenders smoke data format and loading it like a smoke cache.. However it should be properly possible soon: https://developer.blender.org/T41179.

Hacks are fine :) Do you know of any good resources/tutorials for loading external smoke data?

I've got an MRI image, and a data value for each voxel.. trying to come up with a good visualization technique

Did you ever manage this from the external data file? I see it seems to be implemented in 2.72 now...

@HCAI I was never able to figure it out.. I don't see it in 2.72 either; what's the name of the feature I should search for?

If you're still looking for a solution I have one using a particle grid. Ask me and I will provide a detailed response. But it will take me some time to make so I'll only do it if you need it. Otherwise I will eventually do it when I have some time.

@ChameleonScales yes, I'm still interested in getting this to work!

allllrighty then !

However I can't find any MRI image sequence in image formats. Do you know where we can find that ?

Give this a try. It's just raw byte values, forming a 361x433x361 cube!

@ajwood I know this is an old question but I've been making some progress on this (I'll write up an answer when I've ironed out the current issues) but I wondered where you got the original scan from and whether there are any other samples? I'm currently at the point where I can convert the raw data into a tiled image and I can use that in the render to extract each 'slice' - there are just some issues around efficiency and getting the maths right to use the slices correctly.

@RichSedman nice! That 361x433x361 linked above is an mri of my head, which I got after participating in a research study. Sorry, I don't know of a public database to download similar scans.. I could probably come up with some python code to generate 3D textures though, let me know

Wow - cool to have a scan of your own head. Don’t worry about generating 3D textures - this one will be fine. I know there are various scans online but I didn’t find any in such easy to decode ‘raw’ format as this. Here’s a link with an image of what I’ve got so far https://baldingwizard.wixsite.com/blog/post/mri-work-in-progress - it’s pretty close, just need to iron out some issues.

What format are the scans you've found? I'm most familiar with MINC (.mnc), but dumping the voxels to "raw" byte stream shouldn't be too tough depending on what tools you have access to. If you can the the 3D image loaded into a python numpy array, writing it to file would be A.ravel().astype('uint8').tofile('./bytes.raw')

@ajwood I found what appear to be various datasets at https://legacy.openfmri.org/about/, but they aren't 'raw' also just found https://www.researchgate.net/post/3D_MRI_raw_data which seems to have various links but I haven't followed through on those yet. I've got some good results rendering your dataset - I'll post an answer.

You have also some other approaches here https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/62110/using-image-sequence-of-medical-scans-as-volume-data-in-cycles

@lemon The linked OSL solution is certainly the neatest, but rules out using GPU - although I don’t imagine many GPUs can cope with massive image dimensions either. The other solution in that linked question would work for small datasets but as it gets larger the pixels blur in the X direction as it seems that blender can’t handle such large dimensions accurately enough - also, you need to get the raw data into a series of images in the first place.

It is currently not possible to load external Voxel Data into cycles (but is in BI). The feature should be coming soon, as gandalf3 said: https://developer.blender.org/T41179.

Until then you can use BI to use external voxel data.

I'm having trouble getting the effect I want with BI.. I want voxels under a treshold to be transparent, and voxels above the threshold to be completely opaque. Maybe that warrants a new question..

@ajwood Yes it does.

@ajwood for that you can enable the ramp in the texture properties.

In this first sentence, I think that it should say "not possible to load external voxel data in cycles". It is possible in BI.

You can use a particle grid to get back the ability to use a Voxel data texture.

Create a box with the proportions of the voxel data
add a particle system
set the emission to Volume and Grid
set the end emission frame to 1
set a low resolution at first (like 40)
add a texture to the particle system
set the texture to Voxel data
load your voxel data file
Enable Ramp to tweak the threshold
Set the influence to Density

If your volume doesn't appear, it's just because of a little bug that you can easily get around by switching to Blender Internal Render View mode and back to Cycles Solid mode, then refreshing the Voxel Data. The bug is reported here.

add a material
Replace the Diffuse by a Volume Scatter and plug it to Volume
Add a Point Density node and plug it to the density of the Volume scatter
Plug a multiply node inbetween to get a higher density
In the Point Density node, select the other box object and its particle system

tweak the resolution settings of both the particle grid and the point density. Note that the particle grid resolution is limited to 250. If you want a higher resolution you have to slice your voxel data in pieces of 250x250x250 (or any resolution below) and use multiple particle grids. I won't do that because my computer is a toaster but I think you get the idea.

You can then add a particle killer mesh to cut your MRI where you want :

This is ugly because the resolution is low but it can be as good as your computer allows it to be.
Here's a file you can open to test (provided you also put your MRI file in the same folder as the .blend) :

I added some info after step 10 (just to notify you).

This is a super cool effect, but I don't think it'll work for the sort of effect I'm looking for (e.g., https://i.sstatic.net/Jp7Y5.jpg)

it's doable but the example I gave is very low res while the one in your image is very high res. You can surely not get that result with the MRI you gave me.
Also the image you show me is not using volume scattering but surface shading, by converting the voxel data into a mesh, which would be much less computationally expensive to render. I may have a technique for that in Blender but I'm pretty sure you'd be better off with a more scientific program. I know there are several free programs specialized for "converting MRI to 3D meshes" (⬅ google that).

Yeah, I agree that the example I linked was from super hi-res data.. Although here's something I just made with the MRI I gave you, rendered with BI, which I think is starting to get close: http://imgur.com/a/1wZiH -- I figure that if the volume density/scatter is sufficiently high, it'll look like a surface; then the voxel values can specify colours

To get a very high density volume material in Blender Internal, you should watch this tutorial https://youtu.be/mnXaD700bOk

In order to be able to render the data in a file you need to be able to translate it into a format that can be efficiently accessed by the render engine. One method of achieving this is to convert it into an suitably formatted image that can then be accessed via an Image Texture node - but an image is only a 'flat' 2-dimensions and we need to be able to represent the 3-dimensional volume.
In order to store the 3-dimensional voxels in a 2-dimensional image we can split the volume into multiple slices and store each slice as a separate 'tile' in the image as follows :

Then, to render the image, we can use some maths to translate from the 3D XYZ coordinates into the 2D image coordinates by using the 'Z' coordinate to determine within which 'slice' that point resides and the X and Y to pick that pixel from that 'slice'.
Converting the raw bytes in your sample file can be achieved with the following python script :
#Convert a 'raw' byte data set into a tiled EXR image by 'slice'

import bpy
import imp
import os
import sys
import struct
import math

def convert_rawbytes_to_exr(fname, oPattern, oframeno, res_x, res_y, res_z,multiRow=False):

    f = open(fname, "rb")

    size = res_x * res_y * res_z
    density = f.read(size)

    build_exr_from_buffers(gen_filename("mri",oPattern, oframeno), (res_x, res_y, res_z), density, density,density, None, multiRow=multiRow)

    f.close()

# Generate filename by combining name, pattern, frameno
def gen_filename(name, pattern, frameno):
    return pattern % (name, frameno)

def build_exr_from_buffers(filename, dimensions, bufferR, bufferG, bufferB, bufferA, multiRow=False):

    if multiRow:
        numColumns = math.ceil(math.sqrt(dimensions[2]))
        numRows = math.ceil(dimensions[2] / numColumns)
    else:
        numColumns = dimensions[2]
        numRows = 1

    filename = str(dimensions[2])+"_"+str(numColumns)+"x"+str(numRows)+"_"+filename
    print("Building image %s" % filename)

    # Size the image to allow space for Z images of size X by Y
    width = (dimensions[0]+1)*numColumns
    if numRows >1:
        height = (dimensions[1]+1)*numRows
    else:
        height = dimensions[1]

    # Create the image
    image = bpy.data.images.new(filename, width=width, height=height,float_buffer=False, alpha=False, is_data=True)

    # Create an empty array of pixel data (each will hold R, G, B, A values as floats)
    pixels = [None] * width * height
    for x in range(0,width):
        for y in range(0,height):
            pixels[y*width+x] = [0.0,0.0,0.0,0.0]

    print("File '"+filename+"', Dimensions = ("+str(dimensions[0])+","+str(dimensions[1])+","+str(dimensions[2])+")")

    for z in range(0,dimensions[2]):
        print("Processing layer "+str(z))
        #Calculate the location of this 'tile'
        tileNoX = z % numColumns
        tileNoY = int((z - tileNoX) / numColumns)
        tileOffset = tileNoX*(dimensions[0]+1)+tileNoY*width*(dimensions[1]+1)

        #print("Tile = ("+str(tileNoX)+","+str(tileNoY)+") : "+str(tileOffset))

        for x in range(0,dimensions[0]):
            for y in range(0,dimensions[1]):

                p = x+y*dimensions[0]+z*dimensions[0]*dimensions[1]

                # If R, G, or B are 'none' then 0.0 is assumed
                valR = 0
                valG = 0
                valB = 0
                if bufferR != None:
                    #valR = struct.unpack('f',bufferR[p*4:p*4+4])[0]
                    valR = float(bufferR[p])/255

                if bufferG != None:
                    #valG = struct.unpack('f',bufferG[p*4:p*4+4])[0]
                    valG = float(bufferG[p])/255

                if bufferB != None:
                    #valB = struct.unpack('f',bufferB[p*4:p*4+4])[0]
                    valB = float(bufferB[p])/255

                # bufferA can be None to indicate not used (in which case 1.0 is assumed)
                if bufferA != None:
                    valA = float(bufferA[p])/255
                else:
                    valA = 1.0

                #pixels[(y*width)+x+z*(dimensions[0]+1)] = [valR,valG,valB,valA]
                pixels[tileOffset + x + y*width] = [valR,valG,valB,valA]

    print("Image build complete, storing pixels...")

    # 'flatten' the array - so [R1,G1,B1,A1], [R2,G2,B2,A2], [R3,G3,B3,A3],.... becomes R1,B1,G1,A1,R2,G2,B2,A2,R3,G3,B3,A3,....
    # and store it in the image
    image.pixels = [chan for px in pixels for chan in px]

    print("Updating image...")
    image.update()

    print("Saving image...")
    # Save image to file
    scn = bpy.data.scenes.new('img_settings')
    scn.render.image_settings.file_format = 'OPEN_EXR'
    scn.render.image_settings.exr_codec = 'ZIP'
    scn.render.image_settings.color_mode = 'RGBA'
    #scn.render.image_settings.color_depth = '32'
    img_path = bpy.path.abspath('//')
    img_file = image.name+'.exr'
    image.save_render(img_path+img_file, scene=scn)
    image.use_fake_user = True

    print("Complete.")

convert_rawbytes_to_exr(bpy.path.abspath("//"+"AW_t1_final_norm_361-433-361.raw"), "%s_%06i", 0, 361, 433, 361, multiRow=True)

The above code was adapted from an add-on to convert a Smoke Domain into an image in a similar way - to capture the smoke voxels to allow them to be manipulated - see https://baldingwizard.wixsite.com/blog/tutorial-mesh-to-volume.
Note the last line of the script - this calls the above functions with the relevant parameters - in this case, specifying the location of the 'raw' file, the filename format and frame number (left over from the smoke2exr add-on to allow for multiple frames), the dimensions of the 'raw' data, and a flag to indicate the conversion should split over multiple rows (the original add-on converted to a single row of slices - but I discovered this caused inaccuracies as the number of slices grows large; splitting over multiple rows drastically reduces the issue).
Once your file is in place, run the script - it will take a while and you must have sufficient memory. On my system I have 8Gb of memory and the size of the image resulted in pagefile swapping (so any larger and it would really struggle). However, it successfully converted in a 5 or 10 minutes or so (open the Blender System Console before you run the script so you can see progress).
Once complete you should have an image containing multiple tiles :

To convert from 3D coordinates into 2D image coordinates requires some maths as follows :
# Expression to convert Generated coordinates into 'sliced' coordinates for image generated from Smoke2EXR

# Use the Node Expressions add-on to generate the node group from this text

_x = Input[x]
_y = Input[y]
_z = Input[z]

_slice = min(1,max(_z,0)) * ZSlices{128}

_sliceNo1 = floor(_slice)
_sliceNo2 = _sliceNo1 + 1

#...calculate tileX and tileY. Note '0.001' added in to avoid rounding crossover issues
_tilePosX1 = mod(_sliceNo1, TileColumns)
_tilePosY1 = floor(_sliceNo1 / TileColumns+0.001)
_newx1 = (clip(_x) + _tilePosX1)/ TileColumns
_newy1 = (clip(_y) + _tilePosY1)/ NumRows

_tilePosX2 = mod(_sliceNo2, TileColumns)
_tilePosY2 = floor(_sliceNo2 / TileColumns+0.001)
_newx2 = (clip(_x) + _tilePosX2)/ TileColumns
_newy2 = (clip(_y) + _tilePosY2)/ NumRows

Output1[] = combine(_newx1, _newy1, 0)
Output2[] = combine(_newx2, _newy2,0)

# Choose interpolation mode... linear actually seems to produce less banding.
InterpolationMix = _slice - _sliceNo1

I used the Node Expresions add-on to convert the above text directly into a Node Group to perform the above functions. However, you can instead manually build the nodes to perform the same function.
Setup the node tree as follows :

The mapping node allows you to move and rotate the volume - moving it partially outside the 'domain' of the volume allows you to easily 'slice through' to see the inside detail. The node group contain the above function defined in the text - to convert from XYZ coordinates into XY image coordinates - set the input parameters appropriate to your image (in this case 361 slices arranged as a 19x19 grid - these values are encoded in the generated filename). This drives the two Image Texture nodes (using two nodes allows two points to be extracted simultaneously in order to allow interpolation between the two - for better detail). The following maths nodes allow you to control the density and contrast to enable you to tune it to pick out the detail, and the MixRGB node set to Multiple can be used to 'tint' the volumetric (using off-white tends to produce more visible detail in the volumetric).
I used Eeevee to render the volume (don't forget to set the volumetric Start, End, Tile Size and possibly Volumetric Shadows - depending on the effect you're looking for) and this allows it to be manipulated in real time and produces pleasing results :

Blend file included
(doesn't include the image or raw data linked in the comments on the question (they aren't mine to give) but does contain the above code and the generated node group)
For completeness, here's a render using Cycles (this takes considerably longer than Eevee but does produce more physically accurate results) :

A question (and relative to the comment you address me above). Here all the data files are in a single image? So in case of big data, what is happening... Blender is able to swap (disk, memory) the parts? (or there is something I don't get)

@lemon Yes, the byte data file is transformed into a single image which is about 7000x8000 pixels in size. I don’t know how Blender is handling that as far as caching and disk/memory swapping, but that comes out at about 57Mb per channel (so about 170Mb for the whole image).

There is also the thoroughly brutal option of converting the voxel data to a cube-y mesh.  My technique for that is at https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/16570/660 and there are many other answers on that question that might be usable.


text:
UV coordinates on a deformed plane
I added a plane to a scene, subdivided it, and deformed it with proportional editing:

I'd like to UV unwrap this plane, making the mapping what the would have been without the edit mode deformations. In other words, I'd like my UV map to look like a square grid.
Is it possible to UV map this deformed plane to a square grid? Or do I need to start from scratch, and make sure I unwrap it before I do the edits?

I find myself in this situation quite often.  I don't know of any way other than doing a normal U > unwrap and then a whole bunch of S > X > 0/S > Y > 0 to align the rows/columns of vertices into a grid.

One easy way to do this is to add another plane, subdivide it the same number of times, and UV unwrap as desired. You can now in Object Mode select first the deformed plane, then the new one. Now press Ctrl+L and select Transfer UV Maps. Any edits to the UV of the first will be visible on the deformed plane as well, as the exact same data is used.

Awesome! The selection order should be the other way around though; the new plane needs to be the active object.

Really great and useful method @NoviceInDisguise. It openes new possibilities for me. Thanks for sharing.

It is simple to unwrap a deformed plane like in your image, back to a square UV map.
In face select mode, select all the faces with A and make one of the faces active.
Then press U > Follow Active Quads and then choose Even and press OK.
This will give you a even square UV layout.

This didn't work for me: http://imgur.com/hcRCqLI

@ajwood is the objects scale set to 1? Did you use the Even method of Follow Active Quads?

Yep, followed exactly...

@ajwood Try resetting the uvs first with U > Reset then unwrapping with Follow Active Quads.

That did it! After the Reset the Follow Active Quads created square grid, although it was scaled up. Pretty simple to scale it down to size though. Thanks!

Report: Error - No active face

@Keavon you do not have a active face. When selecteing all the faces with A, there will be no active face. See if this answer helps you.

What if you unwrap a square mesh, a flat one, with same number of polygons. Copy that UV, and paste it into the deform mesh you want?
There is an addon to copy UV between objects I think.

You can copy UVs with Ctrl L. However it requires not only matching vertex counts, but matching vertex order. There is no guarantee you'll be able to create another grid plane with identical vertex order.. See http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/2127/599