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Infrared camera simulation
I am trying to create synthetic data for my NN.
I have to simulate an infrared camera but I don't know how.
Can you tell me if it is possible to do it with blender or not?
If it's possible, can you tell me how to do it( I am absolutely new with blender so it, will be nice if you explained every step.)
Also, I would be pleased to listen if you know any app that can simulate it(even paid apps) or any simulator.
Thanks

What do you mean by "Simulate Infrared"? Please provide reference images if possible.

yea sure here its Infrared image. I want to capture images like this. In infrared images colors are based on object temperature and its radiance

Physically accurate simulations or something is not possible. I mean you can do smoke simulations and stuff and use the velocity to map it between blue and red colours. (But these are not actual infrared simulations or anything) Other than that just gradients between blue and red using different objects is possible. But that might be a lot of manual work depending on your situation. In thatt case, provide more details about yor situation. Like what exactly do you want to achieve. You might get a proper answer after that

thanks for your answer. We have a drone and we are trying to control it at night. The problem is object detection at night so we want have to create/get more data for our NN to detect better in IR mode then we can control it really easy. if its not possible to simulate accurately it wont be useful for me. Thanks again :)


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Baking image is partially black, has weird shadows in wrong places
I'm trying to bake a combined image texture for curtains, but the result has random shadows in wrong places. I checked every object, everything unneccessary is disabled for rendering, normals are facing the right way, there is nothing overlapping and no unapplied modifiers. Don't know what else could be causing this. (I separated parts for baking). Ignore the unconnected image texture.

Maybe your unwrap is not correct and you have overlapping UV faces? Try to unwrap again, for example with the Smart UV Project option

True, that was the problem! Thank you so much!

You have overlapping UV faces, it creates a baking problem, unwrap again, for example with the Smart UV Project option.

Yup, another commented the same and I tred it and it helped! Thank you.

Yes it was me   ;)

Check to see if your ortho camera has clipping too high. Also recalculate the normals on those meshes.

I don't even have a camera and I said already that all normals are facing the right way :)

you're right I was lazy and I apologize for not reading the post. It looked like clipping, from the image you posted. There's a bake setting for distance, but I recall that was for baking to another mesh. sorry I couldn't help. wish you the best.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Why is my texture getting distorted in render view?

I don't understand why my texture is getting distorted and some parts are missing or just super flat.

Hello maybe pack your images and share your object?

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AgaplwfgSzN-mPUAzGciKS2foUldzg?e=JoVo0l

onedrive link to the blend file

your link doesn'twork   :(((

It worked for me... try this one: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AgaplwfgSzN-mPUJs7LKT70TBQfgAw?e=K1Oqr9

wow aha the material is super complicated   ^^

I followed this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW-DrBQ-u1o&ab_channel=Erindale

How close is your node tree supposed to be to Erindales' one? - His was done in Blender 2.90 so some of the nodes are going to be a bit different now, but yours is certainly not the same as his one. It's going to take a lot of work for anyone here to compare them and see what the difference is! :^(

I left image texture group nodes but otherwise I tried to be as throughout as possible. I'm assuming I left some nodes uncoccencted or connected them wrong and that is causing the issue.

In that case you're going to have to go right through it again and see where you went wrong. We're certainly not going to do it for you!

Try to Apply the scale before texturing. Your model have 0.5 0.2 0.5 scale.

I figured it might have been because of unapplied modifiers!

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


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Why does render view show black spots and how to fix this?
I think it may be because of overlapping vertices even though this has never happened before and those upper wing parts don't have these spots. How do I fix this?

By Any chance had you adjusted the  draw distance , since I had similar problems when I increased it ?? If so you could reduce it to 1000 or until it disappears.

What's a draw distance?

It means upto what distance from the viewport you can see the models


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How to get a smooth look like this?
I am making a rig in blender and have been looking at other rigs for inspiration. I came across an animator who's rig I really like. His rig has these smooth-like bends I can't see to replicate. This is what the smoothing looks like:
I might be overlooking a feature in blender, but I am pretty dumb and dont know all the tricks just yet. I am using Blender v2.90.1

Maybe try bendy bones? Select your armature and in the Properties panel > Object Data > Viewport Display, choose B-Bone. Then in Edit or Pose mode, select a bone and in in the Properties panel > Bone > Bendy Bones, increase the Segments amount:

Here is what it gives (compared to bones with one segment only), you can play with Ease In and Ease Out values:

You could also use more than 2 bones, some with one segment, others with several:

What you show is special though, as the outer sides are flat while the inner is round, so maybe a corrective shapekey for the inner curve and a driver to activate it?

Thank you! I will definitely give that a try! Thanks!


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Colors in baked texture
I'm trying to bake a procedurally generated texture. Everything seems to work except the colors seem to be off from what I expect. To narrow things down, I've removed everything from my shader except an emit shader with an rgb color (255, 0, 0) and intensity 1. If I just render the object using cycles, the colors shows up as a red (255,0,0). However, when I bake this into a texture and save it to a file, the red colour is now (206,0,0).
I'm a bit lost as to where the problem could be! Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

The solution was the color management. Setting it to raw gave me what I expected.


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Blender crashes in Cycles viewport
I have very frequent crashes. I noticed they come as soon as I am using Cycles and one of theese things : ocean modifier, displacement, complex shaders, volumetrics, and complex geometry in general. The crash occurs randomly while tweaking a setting or adding a node. Not during render, allways in rendered shading in the viewport.
I use the latest drivers.
I tried other blender versions :
-2.90 portable version : less frequent crashes but still a big issue to properly work
-2.83 version : less frequent than portable version but still an issue to work

Some infos:
Render properties > Performance > Persistent image : unchecked
System > Render devices > CUDA > CPU (it is what I found worked best)
No viewport denoising

My setup :
CPU : AMD Ryzen 9 3900x threadripper 12core 3.8GHz
GPU : Nvidia RTX 2070 SUPER ( with latest Studio driver)
RAM : 32 Go
Windows 10
Blender 2.90.1

Please help !

2.90.1 has some crashing issues with GPU viewport denoise and render. This is being fixed for 2.91 (coming out by the end of the month)

In System > Render Devices and choosing OptiX, still gives you crashes? As the user above said, have you tried disabling viewport denoising? In your temp folder you might be able to find a file with the name of your .blend but ending in .crash.txt, you might find the reason for the crash (Also, the Ryzen 9 3900x is not a threadripper)

As said in description I use no viewport denoising. Tried OptiX and still have the crashes. Should I change it in Render Properties > Device > GPU ? I don't get why there are two places to change this setting. (my bad for the non threadripper :p)
I found crashlogs but can't understand them really.


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Why are particles only covering half of a face?
Applying particles to a face, they are only being applied to half the face:

This occurs both with Eevee and Cycles. It also occurs in all viewport shading modes, and a full render. This occurs regardless of the seed used. The problem is not with the weight painting - in fact, the problem does not occur in weight painting mode:

It only occurs in object mode (and the full render). The split appears to be along the 45-degree angle between the x- and y-axes. How do I fix this please? Thank you.

Chack the order of the modifiers, mirror modifier should be after the particles.

I don't have a mirror modifier. Do I need to add one?

[Adding another comment because can't edit] It turned out to be the subdivision modifier! I moved it to below the particle modifier and it fixed it. Thanks very much!

Thanks to @no-can-do's comment:
Switching the positions of the modifiers fixes the problem. Just place the Particle modifier above the Subdivision modifier.


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Particle system - Render as collection splits particles into rig pieces
I got this model that consist of 2 pieces. I aded simple bone structure to animate. Now I want to offset the animation in the particle system. For that I need to duplicate the rig and offset the animation. But when I turn off Particle System/Render/Instance Collection/Whole Collection the particles become separate pieces (wings, body, bones). How do I tell blender this is all one piece and render together as one particle?
Or is there different way to offset animation in particles.

You might create an object that is the boolean union of the pieces and use that as the rendered particle.  Or you could select all the pieces and Join (ctrl-J) them if you want to have them in a single object.

Will that brake the rig? They were same object but the automatic weight didn't work on two objects in one mash.


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Grease Pencil Onto video
How do I draw gp onto video? I have found many of the same question that were answered but there is a teal camera icon that isn't appearing for me, I am in blender 2.90

Related: How to easily draw a grease pencil on top of an image and Live action footage and grease pencil animation

Start with the template for 2d animation.

Set the color management to sRGB, the view transform to Standard and the look to None.

Press Tab to enter Edit mode.
In the outliner select the camera.

In the properties window select camera and enable Background Image.
Set the source to Movie Clip, select your file and set the opacity to 100%

This will allow you to use the video as background image when you are looking trough the camera view. (Note that this image is for reference only, and will not render without setting it up in the outliner)
Select stroke on the outliner (or create a new one using Add > Grease Pencil > Blank).
Enter draw mode and draw on top of the background video.

To render the grease pencil along with the video, set film > Transparent

Then set the compositor with a movie clip node with the video and the render layer and use alpha over to composite them together.

I included this in the question but the camera icon on the right side of the screen is just not there, not the one at the top right but more of mid right.

Please call things by their name...Do you mean in the "properties" window? If you don't see the camera, well, that means you have not selected the camera. In the outliner right -clik on the camera and choose select


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Visual Keying not Properly Recording IK When Baking Animation
While animating something recently, I've come across something I've never seen before. I had just finished the following animation, and since I had used the spring bones plugin to simulate the hat physics, I planned on baking the entire animation with visual keying. After doing so, the animation looks like this (notice how the IK was not baked properly). Any ideas why this is the case? Just to clarify, yes every bone was baked, all are keyframed in the action, the only differences between the first and second gif are that it was baked and that the constraints are no longer active on the latter, no other changes.

here is the blender file containing the animation: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ad3nqj24xmeda4b/MonsterIdle.blend?dl=0

Please do not use external links to describe a question.

The issue is that your root bone has (keyframed) non-uniform scale-- scale that is different in its three axes.  Non-uniform scale can often create situations where a visual transform is not quite possible, and definitely not easy to calculate, and apparently, Blender's visual transforms do not handle it properly.  (Its IK constraints don't handle it properly either, and that is probably an unsolvable situation, so you don't want IK chain bones to be inheriting non-uniform scale anyways.)
Once you clear the scale on Root and delete its scale keyframes, the bake comes out exactly the same as this modified animation.  However, if you've built your animation around Root's scale, it might not be exactly what you want.  You may have to edit your animation slightly.

alright then, didn't realize this was an issue and I'm surprised I haven't run into this issue before, thanks for letting me know!


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"Project from View" option doesn't appear?
I received this blender project elsewhere, so it could be something they have done, but I need project from view for the texture here, and it's just... not there, not sure what other information would help in this case.

Your mouse has to be over a 3d viewport to have "project from view". It doesn't appear on the 2d image editor window.

oh my god... that makes so much sense yet i didn't consider it, thank you


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How to move vertices without stretching the texture
I am newbie with blender and i am trying to make some ortho-images with blender for MFS2020 game. I have plane model and 2048x2048 png texture attach to it. It looks right. But i want to crop that area more spesific, not just a tile. First i realise bisect tool, that is handy for a while, but if i need to edit that area more spesific than just a line (bisect), i dont know how. I have this sample with 10+ vertices around the model, when im tryin to move those, that texture is stretching. Can i move those vertices without stretching that texture of mine?
Image of situation i have: my situation

If you don't want the texture to be stretched by the vertices edit, enable the options called Correct Faces Attribute (since 2.9):

Also if you slide some edge loops (GG) make sure that you've enabled the Correct UVs option in the Operator box (it should be by default):

Thanks. This did the trick!


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Alpha not working properly in cycles
I'm trying to make this transparent lightning but some of the bits Just won't be transparent. but the thing is its only happening on cycles, on Eevee/material mode its completely normal

I don't see anywhere in your shader network where you are using the Alpha channels at all.  You're using the color channels of your images but leaving the Alpha behind?  Eevee might display the textures with their alpha, but with Cycles you need to use that alpha channel explicitly.

It also seems as if you used the Add Shader, which I don't think keeps the alpha channel intact. I'd use a Mix Shader node with the alpha channel as the factor.


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Bevel/Blend base of embossed text
i want to emboss this text and 3d print it. ive added the text just how i want it to appear, but want a smooth transition from the object to the text base.
currently the text and the object are separate things (not joined).
from the image you can see that it is a sharp interface between the two objects.
as it is intended to replicate an injection molded part, the transition from the object into the text should be bevelled from the text base.
ive slightly bevelled the text itself so its not so sharp, but dont know how to bevel where the text intersects the surface.
my other challenge is that i want the emboss to be raised the exact same amount across the object.
the object surface that thge text is embossed onto is slightly curved so the first and last letter protrudes more than the other letters. is there a way to make the text follow the geometry of the object surface?

Why not just do a Union Boolean and then you can bevel the edges

You can achieve the text following the geometry by adding a Shrinkwrap modifier to the text. Here are the settings:

Wrap Method: Target Normal Project
Snap Mode: Outside Surface
Target: (The object you want the text to stick to)
Offset: (Whatever value looks good)

For the beveling problem you can use this free Blender Market addon called Bevel Joints.

thanks Dgc.. shrink wrapping worked- ive learnt something, now trying to get the bevel joint addon to work..

Yeah I tried testing the addon for a little bit, not that much, but I couldn't get it to join without messing the geometry up


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Painting shapes on the mesh
Since Texture Paint lacks the option to add simple shapes like ellipses, rectangles, etc. I would like to know if there is any other way to get this done ? I found this: Painting shapes and patterns on the mesh
but it doesn't seem to work in 2.93, unless I'm doing something wrong (I'm a Blender newbie).

Ok, here just the very basic steps:

add plane

add material, name it bake, use these nodes

tap an "new" in image texture and choose the resolution you want to have

tap ok

add another material by tapping "+"

use these nodes:

add a circle, Tab -> edit mode, press F, Tab -> object mode

choose the material by tapping here  from point 5

add a shrinkwrap modifier like this to your circle:

change to cycles

go to bake settings, choose these:

Select first your circle, then Shift-Select the plane,
then hit bake
Wait a bit.
Now hide the circle or move it away and you will see that your texture is baked on the plane.

Ok, thanks, but does it only work on flat surfaces, like a plane ? I tried doing this on my model, but after I clicked Bake, the whole model went black and the shape kind of disintegrated into pieces and was scattered all over the model.

nope, should work on model as well. can u provide blend file? or a video how you made it?

Maybe instead you could describe step by step how to add, let's say a blue square into a yellow subdivided cube. I tried to do it myself, but of course it didn't work for me, the sphere (cube) is still all yellow.

that's what i did in the answer. Just use the cube instead of a plane. I can only help you if you show me what you did. Either with a blend file or a video.

I wanted to get a blue square shape on the top half of the yellow sphere (subdivided cube).

This is how the baked texture looks https://imgur.com/PcnrVDv


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Close areas sticking each other after the remesh
guys when ı use remesh close areas sticking each other. How can ı fix this?

use higher value?

Second one helped me check the link
https://blenderartists.org/t/close-areas-sticking-each-other-after-the-remesh/1369598/2?u=faruk123gnc


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Light Rendering Problem - Cycles

Was modelling a lamp yesterday,rendered it (one on the left), then saved and closed Blender. I then came back to the file today, added some objects to the scene, then rendered it again (right), somehow the lighting has gone wrong. Afaik no settings were changed, can anyone help how to revert to the one on the left?

So further testing from the save file, deleting most of the objects in the scene seems to make the light render properly. Is there somehow a problem by having many objects in a scene?

uhmm so further testing, there's another object in the scene with a different emission material, and removing it seems to fix the problem. Is there a way for me to keep that material without messing with the light>

I guess it is just the denoiser, just turn it off and see whether that's working...

agreed with Brockman, those are denoising artifacts specially visible when using low samples count.

Those look like artifacts created by the denoiser. Use more samples to render and lower values for denoiser.
Or you might want to try the Intel Open Image Denoiser instead of the built in one.
Related links:
Type of Denoiser built into Blender
How to avoid noisy renders in Cycles?

Try to uncheck Multiple Importance at light source:

Did you read the tooltip?

Have you tried my solution or just declaim tooltips?


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Glare Effect Transperancy Problem
when I use the glare-effect with a background it works perfectly, but when the background is transparent the glare-effect doesnt overlap the objece, meaning it doesnt show on the transparent background.The glare streaks shoud go beyond the space of the object, but doesnt.

There is nothing wrong with your file. Blender's viewer is broken, and has been broken for many years.
It cannot display pixels that are luminous and transparent (it cannot do proper Associated alpha). Switch to Color (RGB) view instead of color and Alpha. You should be able to see the halos and blurs.
As an alternative composite over a black background.
Beware that if you try to save the image as png with alpha you will get no halos or blurs, as the format doesn't support associated alpha either.

More details on these links:
Glow effect invisible on transparent background
How do I get the Glare node to output transparent instead of Black background
Render semi-transparent volume with cycles

Don't be voting this answer down folks, as Susu's answer is absolutely correct here. There is a developer currently working on fixing this I believe, after all of these years.


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Linked scenes with different materials in blender 2.82++
I need to have two scenes exactly the same. The only difference will be the material of each object. It is important to have all the elements between scenes linked so any change in one scene is also applied in the other. This is in order to have an automatic script to generate the instance segmentation image of the scene.
I could copy the scene when rendering, change the materials and remove the scene and repeat every time the user renders, but having a linked scene is much cleaner. I have followed several similar questions which suggest to link the material to the object and not the data. This looks like not working maybe because it works different in linked copies of a scene or maybe because it is blender 2.82.
Any idea how to achieve this? Thanks everyone

One way would be to create a duplicate of any new object and link it with the 2nd scene and also link the object data of the original and duplicate.
Then you can just link the materials to object instead of data.

Can you elaborate of how to do it? I am kind of new in blender so that would be very helpful. thanks


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Weird intersection or gap when I solidify
I'm trying to make a pizza slice in Blender.  However, I'm having some trouble with this, as whenever I apply the solidify modifier, it goes from this to this.  It does a weird thing at the corner.  How to I prevent/fix this?

It looks to me like you don't have manifold(closed) geometry. you might have 2 vertices right on top of each other which makes it look like its manifold even though it isn't.
Try going into edit mode, hit A to select everything, then from the mesh menu select cleanup, and then merge by distance. you might have to play with the distance setting.


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Why those hexagons appears in sculpting mode
Why those hexagons appears in sculpting mode?

what does your mesh look like? can you [edit] your question to add more details?

I ran I to the exact same issue when following BlenderGuru's beginners' tutorial. I was confused and reloaded an old save. It turns out Andrew unhides his vertices at one point and forgets to show it. Try Alt + H before applying the modifiers and it should work
If you've already applied the modifiers go to sculpting and  press'Grab' (yellow one) and press shift while clicking the holes until they are all gone.
If that doesn't work then select the vertices with the hexagon holes and then click f (to create a face there) however this is really inefficient and makes your donut look bad


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How to achieve "3 color" shading?
I'm trying to render 3D text model.
I want it to be only 3 main colors for the shadows (of course you need gradients for round surfaces).
I want it to look like this:
I made the gradient shadow under the "P" with Photoshop. Is there a way to achieve this kind of shading with only blender so that I don't have to edit the rendered image afterwards?
Thanks for your help!

do you want flat colors for the rendered surfaces instead of gradients?

Yeah I basically want to have flat colors, but still want to have somekind of realistic shading, as in my example. I don't want the shadows so be all over the place and I dont want to have gradients everywhere, just where it's necessary (at round surfaces, like unter the "P")


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Python: How to get geometry node "incoming output" for Glossy shader?
I am relatively new to blender and its python API and I am trying to define a reflective material similar to what was described in this post: "How to make a "reflective tape" material in cycles?"
Picture from above mentioned post:

As I have understood it so far you need to define a node_tree with shader nodes and their connections:
mat = bpy.data.materials.new("reflect")
mat.use_nodes = True
tree = mat.node_tree
tree.nodes.remove(tree.nodes["Principled BSDF"])  # remove the default shader

# Define nodes

# Material Output
output_node = tree.nodes["Material Output"]

# Mix Shader
mix_node = tree.nodes.new(type="ShaderNodeMixShader")

# Diffuse BSDF shader
diffuse_node = tree.nodes.new(type="ShaderNodeBsdfDiffuse")

# Glossy BSDF shader
glossy_node = tree.nodes.new(type="ShaderNodeBsdfGlossy")

# (1) How to define geometry_node?
geometry_node = ???

# Define node connections

# (2) how to properly define a connection between geometry_node's incoming and glossy_node's normal attribute?
tree.links.new(geometry_node.outputs["Incoming"], glossy_node["Normal"]) ??

tree.links.new(glossy_node.outputs["BSDF"], mix_node.inputs[1])

tree.links.new(diffuse_node.outputs["BSDF"], mix_node.inputs[2])

tree.links.new(mix_node.outputs["Shader"], output_node.inputs["Surface"])

# (3) How to define node attributes such as Roughness and Fac and set Glossy type to GGX?

For clarity here are my questions:

How do you define a geometry node where incoming can be used as output? Similarly to what is defined by the Blender GUI graph above.
How do you properly define a connection between geometry_node's incoming output and glossy_node's normal input?
How do you define node attributes such as Roughness and Fac and set Glossy type to GGX?

Also, let me know if I have missed anything in the above code.
Thanks

Create the node of interest manually, press ⬆ ShiftF4 to switch to console, paste the following code:
C.area.type = 'NODE_EDITOR'; node = C.active_node; C.area.type='CONSOLE'; print(type(node))

press ↩ Enter to confirm and see what was printed. In case of the "Geometry" node: <class 'bpy.types.ShaderNodeNewGeometry'>. To return to the node editor, press ⬆ ShiftF3.
As for connections, they are called "links" and are accessed similarly to nodes, which your code already shows. The node_tree.links.new() takes an output socket object first (because that's the start of the link), and then an input socket object (that's where the link leads to). It seems you're doing this correctly, unless your indices are wrong. A less error prone way to access sockets is by name, but here multiple sockets have the same name - you could use a list comprehension to gather all sockets with that name and then just access the 1st/2nd element of the resulting list…
As for your 3rd point, "defining attributes" is called "setting a default value", as the values you can see on nodes are "default values" used in the case nothing is connected to them. You change them by writing to the default_value attribute of an input socket.
And finally, in order to figure out how to change the option of the node, you can repeat the ⬆ ShiftF4 trick to find out the type of this node: bpy.types.ShaderNodeBsdfGlossy, copy-paste it to google and find the attribute in the docs:
bpy.types.ShaderNodeBsdfGlossy.html#bpy.types.ShaderNodeBsdfGlossy.distribution
Or after applying this trick you could take advantage of the node name still holding the reference to the node object, type this name, followed by a dot and ⭾ Tab to ask the console for suggestions:

This gives you quite a lot of attributes to test, but is a great way to learn (that's how I learned bpy, mostly).
So your GPT's () code becomes:
import bpy

mat = bpy.data.materials.new("reflect")
mat.use_nodes = True
nodes = mat.node_tree.nodes
links = mat.node_tree.links
nodes.remove(nodes["Principled BSDF"])

output_node = nodes["Material Output"]
mix_node = nodes.new(type="ShaderNodeMixShader")
diffuse_node = nodes.new(type="ShaderNodeBsdfDiffuse")
glossy_node = nodes.new(type="ShaderNodeBsdfGlossy")
geometry_node = nodes.new(type="ShaderNodeNewGeometry")

links.new(geometry_node.outputs["Incoming"], glossy_node.inputs["Normal"])
shader_inputs = [i for i in mix_node.inputs if i.name == 'Shader']
links.new(glossy_node.outputs["BSDF"], shader_inputs[0])
links.new(diffuse_node.outputs["BSDF"], shader_inputs[1])
links.new(mix_node.outputs["Shader"], output_node.inputs["Surface"])

glossy_node.distribution = 'GGX'  # GGX is the default at least in my version of Blender
glossy_node.inputs['Roughness'].default_value = .1

I tested it on Blender 3.5.

Thank you for the very detailed answer! I was able to recreate the material in question for my project using the code you provided. Best regards from a human who regrets putting the term 'bot' in their username :P


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Creating properties dynamically for UI panels in a Blender addon
I'm currently working on a Blender addon, and I'm facing an issue regarding the creation of dynamic properties for UI panels. Specifically, I'm trying to read parameters from a JSON file and display them as sliders or input fields within several panels.
The problem is that I can't find a suitable method to dynamically create these properties based on the data from the JSON file. I've attempted to create them within a callback function or directly in the draw() method of the panel that contains the button responsible for reading the JSON. This answer seems to be similar to what I'm looking for but I haven't been able to get my head around it.
Could someone please guide me on how to dynamically generate these properties and have them displayed as sliders or input fields within the panel? Any help or code examples would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you in advance!

You can try something like this. It's a bit verbose but unfortunately that's how blender can be when working with properties.
First, I create a JsonObject property group, which will contain collections for any data types you want to parse. I've just included a collection property for booleans and one for strings. We can think of CollectionProperties as arrays or lists for a data type.

To fill these lists, I created two more property groups, representing json strings and json booleans. Now, when you load your json data, you'll be able to populate these collections with your chosen data types.
I'll see if i can add some more examples of this approach later. Hopefully this is a good start!

Thanks it worked fine! though its a shame that collections dont allow dictionary-like structures :/

@AdriánDelgadoDelSol I agree, but this design stems from C / C++ where creating custom data structures like this is a frequent necessity.


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Link two faces to each other
Im trying to "glue" the face of the steel block to the face of rubber cover. I want to create somthing like this with an accordion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNaiemTSa6s
What can I do to just glue the faces? Or do I need to rig everthing? I have search and search for a solution but could not find one. I'm using Blender 3.3

Wanna try a bendy bone? It works only in Blender and is similar to a Bezier curve. Like a bone with many segments and 2 other bones that work as handles. There are many tutorials at YT that show the setup.

Thank you, I will look it up!


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I did 3d model at work, did save .blend file to cloud... textures missing at home
So my problem: I did 3d model at work, did save .blend file to cloud... textures missing when im loading this .blend file at home. I have same texture files at home, but diffrent folder structure. How can i modify .blend file to search those textures (jpg) on hard drive? Now my model is simple purple coloured without textures (at home).

Go to File menu / External Datas / Find missing files, then select the right folder on your computer.
A way to avoid this is to check "Automatically pack into .blend" (in File / External Data) before saving ; this will include every texture into the blend file.
Another (better?) way is to use Relative Path data and keep the same folder structure. I usually don't "move" a blend alone, but his entire folder, including his textures/assets/etc subfolders.

Thank you very much. This did the trick. Good advices!


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No distortions with Strokes in a Fisheye render (Cycles)?
I would like to draw my the scene with strokes and render it for a dome view (fisheye 210º) but when i finished to draw and start the render, I have no fisheye distortion, everything is flat like a classic 3D camera.
I use Cycles for rendering.
Anyone get an idea how I can achieve that?
Thanks for your help,
Julien

did you set the camera lens to panoramic Fisheye Equidistant? It is hard to help you if you don't share information on how you set your scene.

Thanks Susu for answering, I found the answer here :
https://developer.blender.org/T70235

"This task can be closed explaining that it's not a supported feature currently.
T68991: Fisheye / panorama in EEVEE is the task to add this in the future."

If you are dealing with eevee then don't use the tag for cycles... It is hard to help if you don't share information or the information is not correct...

Yes I used Cycles, but both render engine can't render grease pencil tool with fisheye camera. It seems that it get is own rendering? I don't really understand but every informations I found says that this is not possible yet.

You can use a lens distortion node in the compositor

Yes, this is a good idea but it works only for 180° and less. I need 210° actually


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Eevee vs. Cycles in camera
I would like to know how in Blender 2.90 do I set Cycles in Camera and Eevee for the rest.
This is due to render time of course.

my guess is you can't, it's one or the other


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Do you know how to make this fine dust?

I want to know how you can implement a private layer of dust as shown in the picture.

https://youtu.be/ZmrCoGj9m2Y


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Normals and vertex normals are correct, but faces are showing black in render
I imported this FBX and some faces on the model are looking weird.
The normals and vertex normals are correct... I already cleaned "custom split normals data" but the problem still exists... What could be wrong with the model?
Thanks!

The material could be wrong.

The material is the same in all the faces. I was able to "solve" the problem by separate the wrong faces (each wrong face is now an object). It looks good on render now but it's still a little weird...


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Broken selection
Blender was normal but it suddenly broke. I'm not able to select using either box select or circle select (lasso is working just fine). The bug only shows up on object mode and the selection tool drop-down menu is acting weird as well. I've tried reinstalling the current version and changing it to more recent and older ones but it didn't work. BTW, it showed up when I closed my first 2.80 project. The tool has been broken ever since.

If there is something that worked and it doesn't work in newer version, post a bug report (just ensure it is not reported already, so search for similar first). Open Blender go to "Help" in top row menu and select "Report Bug". Also try open new file and go to "File" menu > Defaults > Load Factory to check if issue persist. Also try to check hardware specification, there can be a issue with unsupported graphic card.

Blender's user-interface is traditionally coded by a large herd of developmentally-challenged chinchillas. Such problems are to be expected.


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Not possible to ADD SCENE at all - Video Editor

No options to add a scene, at all.  Either a new one or existent.
I have tried with either complex animation and the default cube scene with one keyframe of displacement.  In both cases the same message "No items available" for creating a new scene.
I have rendered the full animation and it only allows me to insert movie strips and audio.
Version 2.90

Works fine for me. You need at least two scenes though and the one where you're using the video editor has to be in a different one than the scene you'd like to add.

First of all, make different scenes, each one with their animation.
Then make a new scene without any animation and open the Video Editing tab.
Finally, from the Video Editing tab, try to add a scene either by Shift+A with the mouse hovering on the Video Sequencer panel, or as you did, by clicking on the Add>Scene dropdown menu.
You should be able to find all scenes but the new one you're video editing from!


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The images after rendering the animation are corrupted
Recently, after I try to render an animation, I obtain strange white images with black block stripes. It does it it in both image sequences and video output. I've already had normal animations with this project but now it is the only result I obtain.
If someone have a solution to solve this problem, it would be welcomed.
An example of the results I have :

Fixed : I had another strip in the sequencer from a previous render which caused the interferences.


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How to correct the mesh deformation from the weight painting?
I am working on my first simulation, which is a bike with a cyclist, and after doing some weight-painting I noticed that the pedalboard was severely deformed. I made some adjustments on it with the painting but there are still parts that I don't successfully correct, plus the angle of the mechanism has changed for no reason.
If someone has any idea on how I can fix that, it would be helpful. Thank you
PS : I join screenshots of how it was before and what i got now. My problem is not on the crank, it was good before my last change but really on the pedalboard.

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

On a bicycle, which is made of rigid, articulated pieces, there shouldn't be any need for weight painting.  Each rigid piece should have its own bone, and should either be bone parented to that bone rather than armature deformed (which is better performance) or should be solidly weighted at 1.0 to that bone and to no other bones (which is worse performance, but there may be some reasons to prefer being able to keep the entire bicycle as a single object, even if that means paying the price of armature "deformation".)
If going the armature route, the proper way to weight a bicycle does not involve weight paint at all:

In object mode, parent the bicycle to the armature with empty groups to create vertex groups with the same names as your bone.

In edit mode, select linked to select entire chunks of your bicycle, then select the vertex group with the appropriate bone name in properties/object data/vertex groups, make sure "Weight:" in that panel is set to 1.0, and click the "Assign" button in that panel.

As more general advice, bits of meshes won't deform when they have uniform weights.  If all vertices of the pedalboard have the exact same weights, the pedalboard won't change shape.  For situations like character armor, where you want similar rigidity, but you may actually want the piece weighted to multiple bones, this can be achieved most easily by selecting all vertices of the rigid bit in edit or weight paint, actively selecting a central vertex, and then clicking the "copy" button on sidebar/item/vertex weights.  This will set the vertex group values of all selected vertices to that of the actively selected vertex so that the selection has uniform weights.

Thanks for your advice. I have an armature which is taking both the body of the cyclist and also the mechanism of the bicycle (pedals and cranks), because it was made in one part and I wanted to make the cranks move along with feet passing by the pedals.
Would dividing this armature in two armatures, one for the body and the other for the mechanism be more efficient ?
Or perhaps, following your first piece of advice, should I have a specific piece for each part of the mechanism linked to the pedalboard (cranks, pedals) as for now, it is just a unique piece ?

You could have two armatures, or you could have one, there are small reasons for either and it doesn't matter too much in this case.

Alright thank you


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How to properly adjust resolution setting
I am making a poster for a billboard contest and the resolution for the billboard on the website is 400x1400 pixels (I have included a screenshot). For blender to I set the x and y resolution to 400 and 1400? I didn't know if I needed to make any conversions?

In the Properties > Output Properties panel, you can simply set the X and Y values to 1400 and 400. As long as the % slider below is at %100, you'll get exactly a 1400x400px image as a result. You can use this slider to resize your output image without changing the ratio. If you set that to 50%, for example, you'd get a 700x200px image. It's soft-limited to %100, but if you want you can click in the box and enter higher values (%200 for a 2800x800px image, say).
If you have a Camera present in the scene, you'll notice that the outline of its frame will match the ratio of your output resolution:

if I double the resolution to 800x2800 will that give me a higher quality render while keeping the same size?

@user142885 Really depends on what you mean by "quality". If you render it at %200 so it's 2800x800, it'll be twice as big, so it won't be the same size, but it'll be the same ratio. Some images might get nicer if you render them bigger then resize them down to the desired dimensions, but not usually. Why don't you just try it with some simple scenes?


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How do I add variation strength between lights on an array modifier?
I have parented several lights the face of an arrayed plane, all the lights are the same strength, is there a way to add different strengths to the lights with out having to individually change each light (there are about 50 lights and it would be a tedious task)

Hello ! If you're using Cycles, you can add custom shaders to the lights and I think you can vary the intensity there

@Gorgious I have to use even, its for a project. Do you know a way to do it in even?

@user142885: the name of the render engine is EEVEE ;)

why don't you use drivers?

@Chris it was a typo lol, how would I use a driver to add variation to the lighting strengths? Ive never used drivers but I only thought they were good for physical element.

Then you should watch some beginner tutorial about drivers and scripting. You will find out that you thought wrong and what amazing power they have.

Two times same typo…that’s magic ♂


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Cylinder with top sized larger then bottom will not smooth side faces properly?
I have made a cylinder with the top sized up to match the diagram being worked with. This has run me into a problem now however because for some reason the smoothing is now leaving the edges slightly visible. When I place down an unedited cylinder the smoothing works just fine. Is there a way to stop that from happening so I get a constant smoothed surface? If not then how do I get the shape I'm looking for while maintaining a smooth surface? I thought it might just be fine but when I placed it in my game in its current shape the lighting showed the faces still. Any help is greatly appreciated!

have you tried right click -> shade smooth and then turn on autosmooth in object data properties -> normals?

Yes. That is the process I used to smooth the mesh. Not sure why the faces still show through only when you size one face as done.

can you add a blend file? (How to add a blend file) that usually works. If worse comes to worse you can always use a subsurf modifier

Just tried but its giving an internal error each time

I can send through a gdrive if allowed

weird.  anyway, I was suffering brain fade.  Of course changing the bottom radius makes the edges more visible.  You can either add more edges or use a subsurf modifier to get around this.  I don't need to see the file.


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What is the proper way to clone an object 1000x with python?
I am building a Minecraft-like map inside Blender, say a mountain or a plain. I want to repeatedly clone a cube with grass or stone texture that I already prepared, and place it at the correct spot.
Problem: the cloning loop gets exponentially slower. It needs 2s to create 300 cubes, 6s for 600, and 14s for 900.
What would be the right way to do it ? Is there a way with a more linear time-complexity ?

Here is what I've tried so far: I already identified the original_cube that I will then duplicate, and one of the two versions of create_clone is called in a loop.
def create_clone(x, y, z):

    # Select the cube
    unselect_everything()
    bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = original_cube
    bpy.data.objects[original_cube.name].select_set(True)

    # Duplicate the cube
    bpy.ops.object.duplicate(linked=True)
    clone = bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active

    # Place the duplicate where it should be
    clone.location = (x, y, z)

Second version:
def create_clone_2(x, y, z):

    # Initial object
    src_obj = bpy.context.active_object

    new_obj = src_obj.copy()
    new_obj.data = src_obj.data.copy()
    new_obj.animation_data_clear()
    new_obj.location = (x, y, z)

You are cloning data, it is not effective. Instead, consider cloning data using instances, for example using vertex instancing

I found the solution: I simply used an Array modifier !
bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='ARRAY')

It creates a thousand objects in less than a second.

No it doesn't, it creates one single large objects with lots of identical parts


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How do I rescale parts of a text defined with geometry nodes?
I'm trying to remake the LUCASFILM logo with geometry nodes. I can set the position of the text, but I want to set its height. Except it's not just the height of each character; instead, the height of the whole text should change continuously from one side to the other. What am I missing here ?
What I tried: only the vertical position is changed (original image in background):

Need to continuously change the scale:

Realize instances to operate on vertex by vertex basis, then just offset by y=sin(x):

To scale the letters you could use another map range like so:

The reference image actually scales on letter-by-letter basis:

You want to reverse that and offset to get the Lucas logo:

Raaaaaaawwrrr! :)

Wonderfulllll! :)

Thanks ! I needed the MapRange node, which I did not know about. link

@user513819 nice :). So I see this is actually per vertex displace.

thank you great explanation and basis for further exploration


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Confused about requirements for rendering
This is probably a small matter, but I'm new here and everything is still confusing. I have a Dell i5-3570 and nothing fancy for graphics yet. When I run a program called "GPU caps" it says that my setup has OpenCL level 1.2. But when I go to "Blender Preferences - System" if I ask to use OpenCL for rendering it says I don't have an OpenCL-compatible card and have to use CPU-only. (I tried to upgrade the driver, Intel said they have a new one but they won't install it because the manufacturer hasn't approved it, and I contacted the manufacturer and they said they won't bother evaluating the new driver because the system is too old, even though it's a quad running at 3.4 GHz.) It seems like the program ought to be able to correctly assess the hardware environment, what's my incentive to upgrade the GPU if it might not correctly recognize the new one either? Or is there just a minimum level of OpenCL the program has to see to say it's "compatible"? Thanks.

do you have an NVidia 920MX?

I wish. All I have is the "Intel 2500", thinking maybe a GTX 1050 Ti LP later when my stimulus comes in. It still ought to correctly recognize what I have though. Maybe it's the analysis tool that's wrong, like I say I don't know much about this stuff. (The manufacturer said the initial version of the setup was OpenCL 1.1 but that document was referencing an earlier version of the CPU so I think the 1.2 is the right number.) Hey I'm trying to do the bits of homework I can understand!

Your hardware doesn't fulfill the requirements for GPU rendering.

Related question: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/173480

Im not 100% sure on this but you can try CUDA and check only your GPU (or both if you want). As far as I know, blender requires GCN generation 2 and up. Im not sure if that is the number you're referencing, but I would try CUDA first.

Thank you. It would have made more sense if the requirement (and also the selection tab) option was something relevant like "GCN 2+" rather than something like "OpenCL" which is essentially irrelevant as regards what has to be present. I guess we're a long way from the days when if you met the requirements for an "industry standard requirement" you could expect the thing you plugged in to actually work. And I had just learned that it was now OpenCL not OpenGL! By the time I'm ready to need this info it'll probably all go over to fiber optics not wires. Sorry to upset you, it's not your fault!

Not really, OpenCL is a framework, like Cuda & Optix. Choosing Either of these in Blender means to choose which framework Blender should use, which is possible only if you have the appropriate GPU. GCN is only a bunch of architecture instructions used by AMD GPUs for basic functioning. See it like frameworks being recipes and GCN an ingredient. Each recipe uses different ingredients that are specific, but give a similar end result. If you don't have the right ingredients, you can't use a recipe. Yet it doesn't make sense to name the recipe by all its required ingredients.


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Tangent handles in Graph editor no longer can be moved
I'm pretty new to blender- thing is ive been editing the ins and outs of tangent handles all day and obviously now something i've done means i can no longer edit the tangent handles- anything i do simply wants to move the key and the handles up or down or left or right- thats going to be no good when i want the curves to cycle well
I even opened a fresh blender- added a cube and transformed that- those handles were editable
ive tried the many tangent types too just to see if an auto tangent thing is being applied
any ideas?

hah
i had accidentally switched on proportional editing- more of buttons in the interface could really shine blue to act as a signifier

You should add this solution to the answer box below. Thanks.

Good point man
I hear the blender community is polite and helpful
I had accidentally switched on proportional editing
One of the tiny buttons along the top of the GE


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How export animation of Sapling Tree Gen in unity?
I’ve created a tree in blender using the “Sapling Tree Gen”, with an armature, an animation and without leaf (I added them after with particle system and convert it, but this is another story xD) now, how can I export the mesh of the tree with the animation and import them in unity?


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Small to large scale
Is there a technique to animate the scale of a model that goes from extremely small scale to a super macro scale. Imagine a detail of an atom, and scaling down the model to show the whole planet.
What is a good way of scaling it continuously without having blender get all glitchy on the extremes?


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Deform guide force field for particle system
I have a curve that has a forcefield applied to it to control the path of a particle system.
Is it possible to deform a guide forcefield with a modifier and have the modifier effect the forcefield?
Currently it does deform the original guide but the path of the particles is unaffected.
Thanks!

maybe it is a better idea to ask how to achieve a certain visual effect than asking for technical details, because someone may come up with a better idea than you thought of. e.g. you could change the curve by hooks.

Why do you need curve modifier? Curve Guide is as any other curve just with Force Field assigned under Physics. Just deform Curve Guide.

Your issue probably comes from emitter location, that is totally out of guide force range. Also I don't see guide range at all in your screen so you have it set to small.

Anyway your proposal works for me ... I just had to enable Apply on Spline (first icon in Curve modifier), but since it takes curve just straight to end point ... so I subdivided Curve Guide.

Here is my file, but if you want to solve issue in your file you should share it. Like now it is full of guessing.


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Blender 3.5 using CPU and not GPU even when I have set all settings for rendering
I want to use my GPU (Asus GeForce RTX 4070) when rendering in Blender 3,5. I have updated the latest drive for the GPU. And I have 16GB RAM.
I have seen multiple people having similar problem with Blender not using GPU but still not found a solution to my case:
Edit > Preferences > System > CUDA> Choose GPU (Nivida GeForce RTX 4070) > close the window.
and it is still not working.
Is there anybody that has a solution to this or can see what I missed?

Maybe try OptiX (it's generally faster than CUDA) and does it use the GPU when setting viewport shading to rendered?

What happens if you enable the CPU as well?

Hello @David, CPU will still see usage when GPU is the selected render device.  Some tasks are better suited to a general purpose processor rather than the highly parallelized but very specific calculations the GPU is designed for.  Task manager also reports usage for basically video gaming by default, you'll have to switch to CUDA on the graph.

I tried to use OptiX only, CUDA with both selceted and OptiX with both selected and it did not work.
Allen Simpson. Which graph are you talking about?
The thing is that today I upgraded my compture from a MSI GeForce GTX 980 to this 4070 GPU. And the rendering time is still the same and therefor it must be that Blender only uses CPU.

OptiX should get the best results.  Tried a fresh driver update already?

Yes, the store updated everthing when I bought the new GPU. Can it be so that the GPU is not compatible with Blender?

No it should work.  If it auto updated you might just go to nvidia.com and get a fresh installer or even try the studio driver available there

I updated my drivers and it worked. The store that had changed the GPU must have done something wrong.


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How do I get rid of the yellow tint when using Sky Texture?

I’m trying to recreate the look of the 3D image on the left (see image) with my project, which is shown on the right. I believe they used a Sky Texture, and that’s the approach I’ve taken as well. However, the Sky Texture in my version gives a slightly yellow tone. I want it to look more naturally gray, like the image on the left.
I’ve tried different settings in the Sky Texture, but I can’t seem to get rid of the yellowish tint, even though the sky appears blue. I have raised the Sun Elevation and Ozone but I do not work as I want. Is there a way to make my model look more like the one on the left in the picture using the Sky Texture?

Try to put zero strength on the sky sun and create your own sun light object.

You didn't share the same file as the one you show, but have you tried the Color Management > Standard instead of the one you've selected?

@DanielMöller I set the Sun Intensity to 0 and created a custom sun, and the result turned out better! I'll experiment with different settings to see if I can make it more closely resemble the inspiration image on the left. Thanks for the tip!

@moonboots The file was just an example since my scen is to larage to upload here. If I select the Standard option instead of AgX, the colors become too bright and appear unnatural.

Note that the image on the left has a subtle vignette, which may be affecting your perception of its color. In reality, the majority of each background is very close to neutral grey.

In most cases you might care about light source colors/temperatures in relation to each other, so it might be convenient to set them up using known temperatures/colors(like in this case sun and sky colors determined by the sky texture) and then adjust the white balance of the whole image. That's what happens in real life when you take photos. Lighting has some particular colors and cameras adjust to that(often aromatically). In current Blender version 4.3 there is now a possibility to adjust white balance in the Color Management panel in the Render tab of Properties editor:

You can adjust blue/yellow tint with Temperature and Green/Magenta tint with Tint property just like you would do in photo editing software. This will affect the output image uniformly though, so all lights will get affected. This is what you most likely want to do in your specific situation you described.
Whatever texture you are using, you can also add any color you want to it with nodes(you would add more blue if it's too yellow):

(Shader editor, World mode)

That's Color Mix node in Multiply mode. You could use other color adjustment nodes to modify the colors of your world texture as well like Hue/Saturation/Value or RGB Curves.
If you wanted to adjust white balance of your HDRI lighting or sky texture only, you cold multiply it by Blackbody temperature color using the same Color Mix node in Multiply mode:

I do not believe they used the Sky Texture for the world at all, as simple as that - unless you have further information about the scene pointing to that.
I think it is just a plain color for the sky (it does not seem to have much of a tint in the shade, perhaps a slight blue) and some light/lamp. Just as @DanielMöller suggested, you can put your own sun in the sky. However then you could just as well completely remove the Sky Texture and make it only a color as I said.
The other thing is, there is a brightness falloff in the image, the central part with the buildings is the brightest and completely colorless, just greyscale (apart from roof color and indoor lights), then it gets darker towards the outer area and the background with a blueish tint, as you can see when boosting the saturation - while your image has not only the orange tint, but also no noteworthy falloff exactly like a sun lamp would not have.
And this would suggest that the original scene might not even have a sun lamp or at least it is not the only light, as this falloff is most likely caused by a point, spot or area light. Or they used a sun lamp and put some kind of vignette over the image in the Compositor to set the focus on the central part.
This is the oversaturated image revealing the blue tint and either a light falloff or a vignette, which could also mean the sky is just the default grey and the vignette has the blue tint:

Setting the contrast to a very extreme value also reveals that there probably is a vignette on the reference image:


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Why is "Follow Active Quads" distorting neighboring faces?
I have seen basically no one discuss this at all. I'm trying to use follow active quads to unwrap this model in a pixel-perfect manner. Follow active quads has always worked for me before, however after 4.0 it seems to not work anymore. Is this intentional? It just warps unselected neighboring uvs and I obviously don't want it to. I've seen no one else discuss this, I'm so confused I just want to unwrap this model but it's been weeks and I've seen no one discuss this.

You need to select a face that is square if you want the unwrap to be orthogonal, if it doesn't work please share your object

@moonboots I just checked the behavior with a similar object. The problem in 4.0 is, if you select just parts of the mesh and unwrap them again, the new UV islands keep the connections to the islands which they share vertices with instead of separating them. This was not the case in 3.6, there the new islands were separate. In 4.0 you can only achieve that by moving the selected faces away from the others beforehand (only in UV editor's Face Select mode!) so they are disconnected, then unwrap them. Don't know if this is a bug or supposed to be like that, could not find a bug report though.

I think I've noticed something similar, pretty bad idea imho


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Edit Mode Crosshair Cursor Invisible in 4K resolution
--Conditions;
I am unable to use a smaller resolution than 4K due to an odd hardware issue.
I am using Windows 10.
Issue only appears is select mouse environments (not limited to Blender.)
Windows UI scalling is applied.
The 'scaling override' in 'compatibility' has already been toggled and experimented with.
Blender's internal DPI scaling does not solve the issue.
Blender's 'Big Cursor' option does not solve the issue.
--The problem;
Due to an odd hardware limitation I'm forced to use an extreme DPI that seems to be generally poorly supported. As a result the normally easily distinguishable cursor in edit mode completely fades into mesh when it hovers over it. I have all Windows tools for UI scaling applied, which works for the most part. But in certain conditions, some elements reverse back to their true 4k resolution, among which the Blender Edit mode cursor.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/w1bkrzzt9vdnv9r/HollowCursor.gif?dl=0
Are there any manual ways to increase the size or its colours to be more visible? Other potential solutions would of course also be appreciated. I'm a bit at wits end with this issue.
Thank you in advance.

Windows has ease of access settings that can change cursor size and colour.

This is the culprit:
wm_cursors.c:
#ifdef _WIN32
/* the default win32 cross cursor is barely visible,
* only 1 pixel thick, use another one instead */
if (curs == CURSOR_EDIT)
curs = BC_CROSSCURSOR;
#else

I downloaded the source code and compiled blender myself to remove this. This way it uses windows's default precision cursor which you can change to whatever you want.

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


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Compositer per frame
I'm making an animation that uses a muzzle flare/flash. Obviously using cycles' emission shader is good but doesn't have the proper halo around the mesh. If I were to use the compositor to add the halo, would I have to do it for every frame?

You could just render that flash frame with the compositor effect and replace the original rendered frame.

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


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How can you fill one mesh's volume with as many of another mesh that will fit?

This was done using a script; however, could there be a way to achieve this effect with geometry nodes?

You mean something like this? https://entagma.com/pack-points-inside-objects-with-geometry-nodes/ He uses spheres, but if you have something like a Lego piece in mind, it would be even simpler since you wouldn't have to trigonometry, just box size calculations.

@Kuboå That's actually really close! I don't know how I'd make the necessary changes though. The node setup he used is incredibly complex.

Imagine you create a curve line, resample it to create points along its length. That's easy enough. Then you make a vertical one and distribute the previous line on that. And do this for a third one on the Y axis. Then "Instance on Points" your legos. You have a big cube packed with legos. Now you just need to use Raycast to check if they're inside your mesh or not, delete the ones outside. Here's a tut for that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvb2aCeTANM If noone else answers I can put sth together tomorrow evening after work, but I need to go to bed now. Good luck.

I integrated a solution based on raycasts inspired by the comment of @Kuboå into my answer

This is my solution. I filled an icosphere with lots of small cubes. It
would work the same with other objects:

And here rendered with a finer resolution:

I tried two different setups. One works with intersection, the other uses a Raycast node inspired by the comment of @Kuboa in a slightly different way.
This is the setup, that uses intersection:

And this is the setup, that uses the Raycast node:

The included node group looks like this:

And here are my blend files:

How does it work
I will first describe the solution, that uses intersection. After that, I will describe the solution, that uses the Raycast node.
Using Intersection
My strategy is to create a grid and scan the body from bottom to top. Doing this, I create the intersection between the grid and the volume for every position of the grid. After doing this, I simply instantiate cubes at every point of the resulting geometry.
Here we go step by step:
The size for the scanning grid and its resolution are given as input parameters. I used a size of 3 with a resolution of 0.1 (0.03 for the rendered image) in every direction, while the icosphere has a radius of 1. The number of vertices of the grid are calculated by dividing the grid size by the resolution.

In order to scan from bottom to top, a mesh line with the given resolution is created:

Then I create instances of the grid along this grid line:

The resulting instances are realized and intersected with the sphere:

Finally, I create cube instances of the size defined by the resolution on every point of the intersection. In order to prevent artifacts, the geometry of the sphere is excluded by selecting only those points, that have the same position as the closest point of the generated stack of grids.

Using Raycasts
This solution starts with the same grid, as the solution before:

Then, cubes are generated on those points:

Only those points will be used for instancing, that are inside the Ico Sphere:

Let’s have a look inside the group node “Is Point in Object?”

Here we need some vector algebra, to understand what's going on. Subtracting the vector of a point P1 from the one of a point P2 results in a vector pointing from P1 to P2. This is used to create a ray starting at the point given by the group input and pointing into the direction of the closest point of the target object.
The ray will point inside the object, if the starting point is outside and vice versa. The normal of the point, that is hit on the object will always point outside the object. This means, the starting point of the ray is inside the object, if the angle between the ray and the normal of the point, that is hit on the object, is less than 90°. The dot product of two vectors is greater than 0, if their angle is less than 90°. Thus, the starting point is inside the object, if the dot product between the direction of the ray and the normal is greater than 0.

I'll note that this method includes the vertices from the intersected mesh as well, which causes artifacts on the surface--which is really the only part that matters. It does work on the inside, but their needs to be a way to get rid of the points that came from the icosphere.

@LWS SWL - I limited the selection of points to those, that belong to the original stack of grids and updated the description.


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Everything is hidden except one object
I'm working on some animation shots and suddenly everything was gone. Except one object.
I have tried to open the scene on other computers, reboot, unhide all,...
Any ideas?

...and have you tried to unhide all other objects? there are other objects, but hidden right?

... outliner in screenshot would clear that up..  clipping maybe?

Try to press Alt H to display all objects (in the case they are just hidden). Otherwise, upload your .blend via http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com and attach it to your post.

Thank you for your answers. The objects are not hidden (tried to unhide all) and this is not a clipping issue. I have probably deleted them or did something stupid. I'm not sure I can share the .blend because of the NDA I signed :/
However I did find a solution to preserve my work: I have opened an earlier version of the shot (which was working fine) and imported the actions from the bad version.
Thanks again and if I find how I did this mess, I will update this post.

Not a solution to the problem (which might be me doing stupid things on my file) but a solution to preserve my work:
I have opened an earlier version of the shot (which was working fine) and imported the actions from the bad version.
Thank you for your help everyone!


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Vertices not connected on duplicate?
Complete blender noob here.
In the following video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmDeKk4VEHk
you can see that everytime they duplicate the vertices it automatically connects them instead of having to select them both and pressing F. How can I enable this because this doesn't happen for me.
Hopefully someone knows the answer, thanks in advance

Hello, he doesn't duplicate, he extrudes –

as Moonboots wrote in the comments, you can extrude a vertex/vertices with E


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Edit mode rendering modifiers and causing problems in visualizing
I've been following Blender Guru's chair tutorial for a while. Part of the chair has subdivision modifier on it. When I go to Edit mode the subdivision modifier is still shown (now like in his video) which makes the edges and faces a little bit harder to visualize for me.
This is how it looks like in his YouTube video. (and I expect like this)

While in my one it shows up like this (I am also in Edit mode)

You can see I cannot clearly visualize and select the edges required to select. So what can I do?
My Blender version: 3.0.0
Date: December 2, 2021
Branch: Master

Just turn off the "Display modifier in edit mode" option, the one highlighted in green


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Gizmo controls disapear behind the gizmo (viewport question)
I'm still new to blender so excuse my noob question;)
but I think it's super anoying that the handle of the gizmo disapears behind the gizmo itself when you look at it (semi) directly at it and I asume this is a option which I can disable. but I haven't found out how, so I need someone to tell me please:D
In the picture you see the X and Z axis handle, and I also want to see the Y axis from this perspective, instead of rotating my cam to be able to move it.

The Y-axis handle is there too but it's just a green dot which you can drag. There's no way of disabling that behaviour as far as I know, but most folks would use hotkeys (G Y in this case) to move the object or Middle-Mouse-Button drag to rotate the view..

hmm to me the Y handle is fading away once I get close to centre. the green block u see on the pic is a combination of the X & Z axis...
I really don't like reaching for my keyboard everytime im moving stuff..

Can't really help any further on that one. I very rarely use the gizmo, or even have it activated for that matter.


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Network Render with SSL
A key and certificate are required on the Master to use the SSL feature of Network Render.
How do I generate such a key/certificate pair?
Do I just use something like the following?
openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:4096 -keyout key.pem -out cert.pem -days 365

Searching for Blender network render SSL led me to the Blender 2.6 Documentation (which appears to be outdated).
However, it does not state the type of certificate required, except that it can be self-signed (which is what I am trying to create)

you should probably try with those self-signed certs, maybe an error messege will shed some light... I would also report that to the documentation team (bf-docboard@blender.org)


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Combining rendered images to increase samples
Not sure if this is the right subdomain to post in.

Why is it that in order to combine multiple rendered frames with same number of samples, but different seeds, that I need to use 100%, 50%, 33%, 25% etc. instead of 1/n (eg. 25%, 25%, 25%, 25%)?
I tried using 1/n, but it resulted in some transparency. The first method (100%, 50%, 33%, 25%) seems (intuitively to me) that the first layer would have too much emphasis.

Is this in relation to using blender? You most likely won't get an appropriate answer if it's for something else.

I think you’ll need to provide more information such as how you are combining the images. I’m guessing those are mix factors - in the compositor? If so, then please include an image of exactly what it is that you’re doing.

@RichSedman So basically I am following this guide (https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/21809) to reduce noise by combining multiple renders, each with a low number of samples - There is also an image showing how the mix nodes are used in the linked page

From the linked answer (https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/21809) you have the following image to show the compositor node setup :

As mentioned in the correction to the linked answer, the Mix factors are actually incorrect - the correct values are as you stated : (100%), 50%, 33%, 25%, 20%, for 5 images (where the 100% corresponds to the first image which shares the mix node with the second image).
While this might intuitively seem wrong, it is actually correct due to how the images higher up the chain actually proliferate through multiple Mix nodes.
Consider the four images A, B, C, D.
Starting at the last image 'mixed', this is included with a mix factor of 25%. As expected, this will contribute 25% to the final result. This means that 75% of the final result will be contributed to by the remaining 3 images (A, B, C).
Final Result = 25% of D + 75% of (A, B, C)

Now considering the next image (C), this will contribute 33%, meaning that A and B contribute the remaining 67% (actually 33.33333% and 66.66666% would be more accurate) :
Final Result = 25% of D + 75% of (33% of C + 66% of (A,B))

For the final mix, 50% is contributed by B and the remainder (50%) is contributed by A (we don't need to bother with the 100% since that's purely A) :
Final Result = 25% of D + 75% of (33% of C + 66% of (50% of B + 50% of A))

All we've done so far is expand the mix nodes to represent the percentage of each output that contributes to the output, bearing in mind that the two percentages must add up to 100% (so if one image contributes 'x'% then the other must contribute '100-x'%).
Now, we can multiply the percentages into the braces to expand as follows :
Final Result = 25% of D + 75% of (33% of C + (66% of 50% of B) + (66% of 50% of A))
             = 25% of D + 75% of (33% of C + 33% of B + 33% of A)
             = 25% of D + (75% of 33% of C) + (75% of 33% of B) + (75% of 33% of A)
             = (25% of D) + (25% of C) + (25% of B) + (25% of A)

i.e. Because the Mix nodes are chained together, the 100%, 50%, 33%, 25% factors combine to result in each input image contributing to 25% of the resultant image.
As mentioned in the linked answer, the same result could be achieved by using Add nodes to add the images together and dividing the result by 4.
i.e. Mix nodes (note the reducing Factors) :

Is equivalent to Add and Divide nodes (again, note the Factors set to 1.0) :


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How do you model an object (car) without all the orthographic views?
I for example want to model a car, but there is only one perfect orthographic side view and one imperfect front view images. I've got only 2 views and missing 2 views.
I start to make blueprints (in blender) for the orthographic views but the end result is not as expected and I'm left with blueprints that don't match.
Here for example I tried to make blueprints for the Praga R1R:

https://i.sstatic.net/4VbSa.jpg
As you can see, the end result is not nice. I tried to match front view with the side view taking reference points but without success (you can see the back side of the car in the front view which you shouldn't).
I then proceed to start modelling with the help of perspective images of the car, but then give up as I couldn't match the proportions.
What do I do?

Without any references to get accurate dimensions, you can take Artistic License on it.
Basically just decide upon what you believe the accurate dimensions to be and go off of them and GL.

Ideally would be just to draw the other views. If you don’t have this option, you can at least measure some dimensions and use the side view as the main image. You can use that front view for side’s view depth dimensions, but make sure the images align vertically:

Side view is the most important view on a bilaterally symmetrical object (that mirrors left to right). It’s because you see all the planes, even if distorted. For example, the front and back will project mostly on front and back angles, but not completely. The planes are at an angle to the orthographic planes and not parallel. Therefor you can see a smaller part of the from the side and even from the top. I illustrated how the mesh projects on different views here:

Next step is to add resolution to the planes, so they become curved. Notice that after the points are moved, from the side view, the middle edge is not at half of the plane, but rather closer to the borders. It would have been half way if the plane were flat after adding details. This is just how curved surfaces project.

This last idea can be useful when dealing with details. In your case, the back lights from example, look like they end close the middle of the surface. (they look different from the real model though).
A good strategy is to start with more affordable models so you better develop the modelling technique. The point is this kind of situation happens and the only options are dealing with reference in perspective, or in this case, try to make the most of your blueprints so you can then make better educated guesses.


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Curve text around cylinder
I'm new to Blender so please excuse this question. I know there is already a question regarding this topic, however I'm having trouble with the solution posted there.
I want wo wrap text around a cylinder, but it should not be flat but "stand" on the curve, like this:

To do so, I created a bezier circle and used the "Text on curve" option to make the text follow the circle. Now it looks like this:

In the answer to the question I posted above, it says I should rotate the text on the x-axis to achieve the "standing" effect. However when I rotate it on the x-axis, it looks like this:

What am I doing wrong? Thanks for your help!
P.S. Please excuse my english, I'm not a native speaker! :)

I think that you are trying to use the Font text on curve option, but the solution you reference on the other page uses a Curve Modifier on the text object to make it follow the curve, and then you can rotate on axis until you get the position correctly.

Oh, there is a difference between "Font text on curve" and "Cruve modifier"? I thought it was the same thing. Thanks!

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/33434/how-to-add-curve-modifier-to-text/60958#60958 and https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/44758/emboss-text-onto-curved-surface/44820#44820

Add a text and convert it to mesh. Add an empty and use Simple Deform modifier > Bend with the empty as origin and high, like 4, Deform factor. You may want, too,remesh and subdivide the text mesh.


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Particles: How to stop object from sinking into mesh?
As you can see in the picture, no matter what object or plane, they sink halfway almoststicking to the bottom of the plane. I haven't found any solutions on this yet and figured it would be of great help to myself and a lot of people to have a solution here on stackexchange.
All help appreciated :)

Deflect Size option in the particlesystem settings?

I've tried ticking and unticking it, left unticked the objects are sunk even deeper to the mesh. Ticked the appear as on the photo. Gonna experiment with some weight paint, maybe that will do?

Opened up a new blender project, tried to keep it as basic and simple as possible, two planes and a basic uv sphere. Still they sink slightly into the mesh. Deflect size and solidify does nothing. If I use the basic halo particle it seems to work though.

I'm gonna further other aspects of my project as I've been stuck on this for hours now. Any help is appreciated still though.
What I want is for object x to rain down on plane y, and stacking untill it overflows. I'm sure it's possible as is, but would love for the first few objects not to sink into the mesh itself.
Thank you.

Okay, sooo ... I think the problem lay in my object itself, because it works with two basic planes and UV sphere. Maybe I just made my object a little to muddy for the collision to read. Will update.


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OptiX is not compatible with GPU
I have an NVIDIA GEFORCE 930MX graphic card, the latest version (445.87) but still, I got a message that OptiX is not compatible with it.
According to wiki.blender any newer than 435.8 should be supported.
Any idea?
Thank you :)

The 930MX is not an RTX card, which is required to use Optix (see GPU rendering in the manual).

Thank you for your response!


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Export FBX to Unreal
I have created a couple of models (with materials applied to them) that I have applied subdivision surface in adaptive mode. Some of them in Catmull-Clark mode and some other to Simple mode.
I want to import my models into the Unreal Engine, and I am wondering which is the best way to maintain the subdivision.
There are options under the Geometry sector with Smoothing (Normals Only, Face, Edge), Export Subdivision Surface, Apply Modifiers etc.
Additionally, should I export my models as high poly or as low poly? I will apply later in Unreal Engine a specific modifier like in Blender? Or there is not this option?

Thank you!!

It all depends on your game. although unreal is good at handling high poly assets if you do LOD.
The smoothing option is for smooth shading.
My recommendation would be to make range of tris budget count for assets (like up to 2k tris for none important and up to 12k tris for important, although if its a vr game you can go higher it's up to you and your target hardware and frame rate)

It is a an environment scene with a couple of buildings, streets and props, for my Portfolio. No VR.

if it's a Portfolio scene then keep them as good looking as you can with in reason so you could at least hit 30 fps for showcasing it.

Thank you for your response, but I don't feel that you give me an answer! I want also to have the best result, for this reason, I am asking how I will achieve it!


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Face Orientation weird effect
There was a weird effect on my textures that when I set to face Orientation, I got this result.
Any idea what it could cause it?

This looks a lot like z-fighting caused by too large clipping range.

Either adjust the values in Clip Start/End
or switch to Orthographic view through View > Orthographic (Numpad 5)

Change clipping distance...

...or switch to Orthographic view

Yes, It works! Thank you!


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Adding several deform points in one circular object (belt)
I am trying to go to the "next level" of modeling, and trying to sculpt the CGTrader challenge.
So far I was handling it good but, wanting to achieve realism, I got stuck at the point of how to make a smooth deform along all the rivets/buttons of this stool belt (as the attached picture).
I want to make the "pressure" deform effect using either array modifier or using the button-objects themselves.   I have not found anything related to it, since it is very specific effect.
Which would be the quickest way to select all the deform points quickly, without having to do them individually.
Thank you all for this fantastic community.

I think that for the small deformation around those buttons I would try using a normal map, might be easier than dealing with such fine geometry.

You could use an array + simple deform (like modeling a tire) or go with radial symmetry in sculpt mode to name two more ways.

I might try attaching the buttons to a flat, heavily subdivided belt, and then selecting all the buttons, and scaling down with proportional edit turned on.


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Animation Nodes Crashing and not loading properly again
I was trying the animation nodes features, when I tried to render animation it crashed and, for my surprise, the whole node-set is red and "Undefined Socket" labelled.

make sure that the animation nodes addon is enabled

Go to Edit > Preferences > Add-ons and reenable Animation Nodes in the community tab, which was switched off for me after Blender crashed. If Animation Nodes is not there as an option, try reinstalling the add-on if you have the zip file.

This is totally a bug that happened while rendering. This is probably not supposed to happen. Try closing blender and restarting your computer. If you are still facing this issue, try recreating the setup. I know it's hard to set it up again, but It is possible. I had to try 7 times just to simulate fire using materials and animating it, but the end result was great.
So don't give up and do what I have said. If it doesn't work, try at least 10 times. If it still doesn't work, I think you are using a version of blender that can't support this kind of stuff. (Which is highly unlikely). And a tip for using this site, don't put stuff or questions regarding the answer as an answer. You can comment on he question instead.


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Rigify not using weight-paint from armature
Pretty basic question, but after parenting the armature to the object and weight-painting all the bones, I use the "generate-rig" button and, despite the rig appearing correctly, it´s not parented to the object.  If I parent it again it will weight automatic and I will have to do all the Weight-painting job again.  Is there a simple solution?  Or should I weigh only after creating the rig?

The Metarig is only something like a "Placeholder", it's used only to set the locations of the bones and it has no other relations with the rig, so: yes, you have to weight only after creating the rig.

Thanks for the clarification, Josh.
I just wanted to be sure there was no way to "transfer" the weights, between the Metarig and rig itself.

Weights are properties of vertices, in relation with a vertex group, so they are stored with the mesh and do not belong to rigs. If a mesh has an armature modifier pointing at a rig and a vertex group has the same name as a deforming bone of the rig, the bone will move the vertices.


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Out of memory error when rendering simple ocean modifier (20GB)

I was experiencing issues with the OCEAN modifier, and then I tried to render it alone, and the same error occured  (only 10.000 faces).
I have seen a tut in which the guy used way higher resolution, and still, it was showing relatively fast and flawlessly in Cycles.
I have 20gb, and the render crashes after ramping-up from 7 to 15gb of full mem usage (still very high for a subdivided plane with a modifier in it).
I have tried to attach the .blend file, but I don't see that option here anymore.

Thank you.

You could be running out of VRAM. Are you using very large textures?

Check out the resolution in the ocean modifier : Like the subdiv modifier, there is one for viewport and one for render (Yours is set to x10 in render)

It's not video, there is no texture at all, just transparency BSDF.
Regarding the resolution, I am setting a big scene with ocean and mountains. If I use less than 100, the ocean looks like a pound

B.T.W. I've tested on both 2.93 and 3.00 builds.  Same outcome.

Well, I have found a solution for achieving a high-resolution ocean, with lower settings. https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/107812/ocean-modifier-color-and-foam Thanks to https://blender.stackexchange.com/users/29370/cgslav


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Arm fall off body animation
I'm doing an animation of a zombie character dancing and at one part i want his arm to fly off and detach. However, when i try to keyframe the object of just the left arm flying off it gets very warped because it's binded to the armature. Any ideas? See screengrabs.
How i have it setup:

I made each arm a separate mesh
They're all binded to the armature and work good for the animation
In object mode i'm trying to keyframe the arm flying away and it gets super warped.

help!

Change the parenting of the two bones that make up the shoulder so that the upper arm bone is not connected to the shoulder bone.  Then do the animation using the armature and simply move the upper arm bone -- the rest of the arm bones will follow.

I'll lose my animation if I change all the parenting right now and have to redo. Is the a quicker fix?

hmm... parenting, well 'connected' setting  in the parent relationship should be something you can keyframe, but it's not working for me in 2.93.  My second guess to try would be to see if you can do something with the vertex groups, but short off that, I think you're going to have to lose the part of the animation that starts where the arm starts to fly off

I think my cheat solve… Will be to make the arm mesh disappear via key frame transparency. Have another arm appear in the same location and key frame the arm falling off which would have no armature on it.

It's not cheating if it works. ;)


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Alpha Volume Scatter Weirdness
I have a volume scatter box (which is fog) which has a principled volume shader on it. I then have this barrel with a png image in front of it, i enabled the alpha... however the volume scatter box is creating this weird line on it.
If i remove the volume scatter box it goes away. Not sure how to fix. Help!
I saw this old post that talks about it but the solution is very unclear.
RIGHT HERE
Alpha Transparency Lightening and Volume Scatter

Ok i figured it out. Literally, just add 1 to the Min Transparent bounces and fixed.


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Camera Tracking - Fast camera move
Fairly new to camera tracking. I did a camera move that goes from the ceiling to the floor and I'm not able to get a camera solve to work. Camera trackers only last so long as when the camera moves they are out of frame.
Not sure if there's a different method when you have fast big camera moves?

Good camera tracking relies on markers being present and clear for most the video, so quick or large moves are generally difficult (but not impossible). If you can share your Blend file and any associated footage we may be able to better help you https://blend-exchange.com/

Sure thing please take a look.
https://we.tl/t-m1bKlWHdKA

Creating a good camera track relies on several factors that allow Blender to calculate the three dimensional movement of the camera. These suggestions below can help you improve your motion tracking.

A variety of conspicuous track points present in all three dimensions of the scene, meaning left-right and up-down, but also having trackers in the foreground and background of your footage.
A majority of these trackers need to stay in frame. It is fine if some go out of frame once in a while, but you'll need to go in and manually make adjustments/delete certain trackers if they get lost.
Stable/clear footage is always easier. It is possible to track footage that has large or quick movements, but it will require more work and more trackers. Any movement that may confuse Blender as to how the camera is moving may cause a track solver to fail.
You can also play around with using actual tracking markers like these. I will often print out some and place them around my scene before recording footage. This will help Blender better stay locked on the track points so you will probably get a better track; however, you will need to do some more work in post to remove them from the scene.
Make sure that the scene has good lighting and use as high of a frame rate as possible to reduce the effects of motion blur.
If you need really fast movements but Blender is having trouble solving a camera track, then try recording your scene at half or a quarter of the speed that you want it (physically move the camera slower). This will reduce motion blur and give Blender more footage to work with, and you can always then speed the clip back up later.

The footage of the table and chairs that you attached seems very trackable to me, so I'd recommend playing around with some of the techniques above and see what works best.

So sorry i attached the wrong video clip associated with my blend file. This is the shot I'm having issue with. https://we.tl/t-j79hJa0ebq

This footage definitely looks harder to track, but I don't think it's impossible. If possible, I might reshoot the footage with some clear tracking markers in frame (whether true trackers or just clearly defined objects) because you loose a lot of key features near the end when the camera is pointed at the ground and there are no good points from which to track. It won't be easy, but I think its possible if you put some time into it!


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Mesh explodes before impact
This is driving me nuts. I have done cell fracture. (I did merge by distance to clean up). I have them all set to "deactivation" and "start Deactivated" checked.
On the sphere coming to hit it's set to animated.
But the mesh just blows up the moment the simulation starts on the first frame. I've removed rigid body and re-applied a few times. I've restarted blender. nothing. Help!!!

i would suggest to provide blend file so we can check it out.

Have you applied the scale of your objects?


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Is there an easy way to uv map a circle to a half of a sphere?
The default map of a sphere is a square but i'm trying to map a circle to the top half of the sphere and doing it manually is tedious and inaccurate.

Let's say you have half a sphere:

go to orthongraphic top view (Numpad 7, and  Numpad 5  to togle orhto or perspective)
select all faces, press U, to unwrap, and select Project from view (bounds)

The bounds option means that blender fit the UV map to fit the bounds of the UV image. Note that this will only work without distortion if the image used for UV mapping is square.

Thank you so much! This was exactly what I was looking for!


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Is it possible to apply two different displacement maps to two different regions of a mesh in Blender?
My attempt to accomplish this was to create 2 separate UV maps that only map the vertices in the region I want to apply the displacement maps to. Then I apply 2 different displacement modifiers and use one UV map for each. This did not work as expected. Here is what I did specifically:

Create a mesh. In my example I am using a simple ring model made by using a smaller oval curve as the bevel object for a larger circle curve. After increasing the Resolution Preview I then convert this object to a mesh.

Delete existing UV map

Select first subset of vertices for one of the displacement map. Generate new UV map with UV > Cylinder Projection. Direction should be align to object and select Scale to Bounds

Select the next subset of vertices. Create a new UV map (Object data properties > UV Maps > Plus button), and then generate the new map with a Cylinder Projection again

Create 2 displacement modifiers with the coordinates set to UV and the 2 different UV maps selected. These are the displacement maps I've used and the resulting mesh

This almost works as I expect. Each displacement map is in the area I want it to be, but the outer surface has both displacement maps applied. I noticed when I created the second map, the original map's vertices seemed to be under the new map. However I am not able to delete these. I am assuming this is the root of the problem, but I don't know how to solve it.
Please let me know if I need to supply additional information

Did you try to additionally use vertex groups for your displace modifiers? Just the ones you need? Should be pretty much the same as you selected for the UV map, maybe that helps

You have already created two vertex groups, OutsideGroup and InsideGroup, and used them for the UV Maps.  You only need one more step: Add the appropriate vertex group to the Vertex Group field of the correct displacement modifier.

This did work for me. Do you know why it’s necessary? When I create the second UV Map why do the original vertices populate it and how do it get rid of them?

No I don't.  You'd think the UV Map would be sufficient, but the modifier works on the entire object unless you give it a vertex group.


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Transfer material assignments to retopo'd mesh
I can't find a way to transfer materials to my retopologized mesh. I have a terrain with multiple materials assigned to it, I've then retopologized it and want to transfer the per face material assignments to the new mesh... similar to how you can transfer vertex colours.
Thanks

Maybe that can be useful (or done) only in particular cases. Can you give more details?

What would you like to know? I'm looking for a way to project material assignments to another mesh like you can with vertex colours using the transfer mesh data modifier. Linking materials will create the material slots, but not assign it to the polys.

Well... highres poly to lowres poly won't match... that's why this operation does not exist. Or eventually for specific cases.

Yes, Maya has transfer shading sets which does exactly what I want. I was hoping there was a way to do something similar in Blender. Thanks


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Why are my particle paths offset from the particles?
I'm emitting particles from a mesh off screen and they're falling down and bouncing off of the ground mesh. Everything with the particle simulation looks good, however when I set the particle display to paths, they seems to be offset from the paths the particles take. Like you can see in the image, the paths appear to collide with the ground, but it's actually offset about 0.5m from the ground.
I've tried different integration types with no luck.

please provide blend file

Here you go, Let me know if the link isn't working.Thanks!

Hey @Chris Did you have any luck?

I had the same problem when using a Curve Guide for my particles. Problem was that the effector weight of "Curve Guide" (under Particle Properties -> Field Weights) was not set all the way to 1.
This fixed it for me even though I find the behaviour weird. I would expect the particles to stick less to the curve when lowering the effector weight and not offsetting it.
Edit: It is a known bug:
https://developer.blender.org/T71745